Recently, there have been several reports concerning a French court ruling in a lawsuit against eBay. Every year, millions have been invested into combating the problem of counterfeits. In 2007 alone, across all eBay sites around the world, we removed over 2 million potentially counterfeit listings, and we suspended over 50,000 sellers whom we believed may have been attempting to sell fake goods. Details of our anti-counterfeit policy can be found here.

Through the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Programme, our efforts to remove counterfeits from our site – often before anyone is able to see them, let alone buy them – are recognised by 18,000 manufacturers whom we successfully work with to combat counterfeiters.

While recognising the importance of fighting counterfeits, we do not agree with overly broad attempts to protect uncompetitive commercial practices of authentic items at the expense of consumer choice. This threatens the livelihood of our law-abiding sellers and the ability of our buyers to get great deals. Overzealous implementation of restrictive sales practices are anti-competitive and give you, our buyers and sellers, a bad deal. This is recognized by European Union policy-makers who are seeking to create a better framework for online sales to promote e-commerce in Europe.

For sellers: Be certain that your item is authentic
Sellers who list items that are popular targets for counterfeiters must be certain that their items are authentic. Sellers should not purchase from unknown distributors and should beware of prices too good to be true, or of suspiciously large volumes of available items.

Also, please know eBay has a variety of safeguards in place to protect the marketplace from counterfeits, and occasionally good sellers with legitimate items will be slowed down by these restrictions. We recognize this can be inconvenient for some sellers, and we appreciate your continued support in this very important matter.

eBay will continue to fight against counterfeits, but we will not accept outdated attempts to restrict unfairly the Internet to the detriment of our Community. We will continue to fight for consumer value through e-commerce, and we will be appealing the ruling in France.