Spyderco is suing eBay for counterfeits

I wonder if there is any chance? Ebay is a big big company. Heck I'm sure there are plenty other industries out there that would love to do the same. I wonder why they haven't as yet and I have no doubt that they will be watching this carefully.
 
How can they even sue eBay they aren't responsible for the items listed nor can the verify and validate any items. The only case that could be made is if counterfeits are labeled as such and eBay allowed them or if eBay does nothing to reported sellers of counterfeit products. My thought is if there was a case that could actually be made against eBay a bigger company than Spyderco would have done so already.

Anyone have links to this news and/or some source on it to give us more details on what exactly is going on.
 
This is an ambitious lawsuit. eBay has been shielded for years under the same laws that protect, for example, Bladeforums from liability for posts made by its contributors.

That said, many of the counterfeit listings are literally labeled as such. I spent an hour one afternoon reporting flagrant Spyderco and ZT counterfeits on eBay, and it wasn't like I had to do much hunting to find them. The fact that eBay pretends they can't do the same, or write software that does the same, is bull****. I must have found at least a dozen with a single search. In fact, these days any decent 'tech company' could have used my counterfeit hunting to teach a machine learning algorithm how to spot fakes before they're even listed... there are lots of solutions to this problem but the biggest hurdle to solving it is that eBay seems not to care. They have a compelling reason to 'look the other way,' since they take a cut for facilitating the sale. It's unethical, and I hope that Spyderco can make the case that eBay has been negligent or worse in its duty to find and boot out counterfeit sellers and listings. Would love to see more companies joining the lawsuit, too.
 
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Very interesting makes you wonder how liable they could be seeing as how they're simply an intermediary.

edit: knifenews.com just search Spyderco suing Ebay
 
good.

if sucessful it will benefit everyone in the long run ebay and spyderco and the buyers.
 
I think they can sue them for someone posting that THEY ARE conterfits. But those where the seller is lying Ebay has no way to control.
 
I think a big problem is that ebay allows blatant clones to be sold, or at least I see a lot of them on there. They are labeled and appear very much like a spyderco including the wording on the blade, like Golden Colorado, Earth, but because it states "paramilitary clone" in the product description or title it's not getting booted quickly. I report all of them that I see if skimming through items on ebay but the amount of them is incredible. Everyone I've seen has been from China, usually hongkong, so selecting a seller from US only usually filters the fakes out pretty quick. Or most of them at least.

I honestly think Ebay tries to keep things legit but the amount of fakes passing through, and how real some of them look, makes it really hard for someone from Ebay to know what's a fake and what isn't.

There have been a few posts where cabelas has fakes in their show cases and I would expect them to know more about knives than an ebay employee, unless that employee was a knife nut by chance.
 
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I'm too ignorant of the law to know whether this case has any chance of succeeding but I do know that, all things considered, I really want eBay to do their very, very, multi-billion-dollar-company best to stop people from selling fake knives.
 
I don't think eBay can do much about counterfeit listings, but they could do a better job of removing counterfeit sellers and keeping them off.

It's pure speculation of course, but I'd guess that's where to lawsuit will focus.
 
Just think Backpage, which this action follows.

Backpage, a classified ads, the original Avenue for sales, had been gone after, successfully, for contribution to prostitution and human trafficking. Now opponents claim Backpage has known.
 
Good on spyderco. I have stopped buying from eBay for the most part a few years ago. I'll buy something occasionally if I know it's the only option I have and the item is for sure legit.

Ebay cares about money only. They can care less about Making things better for consumers. Hopefully this will force them and I hope others join in on the fight.
 
Good on spyderco. I have stopped buying from eBay for the most part a few years ago. I'll buy something occasionally if I know it's the only option I have and the item is for sure legit.

Ebay cares about money only. They can care less about Making things better for consumers. Hopefully this will force them and I hope others join in on the fight.
Yes, and the thing is that people report scams and counterfeits all the time. Yet ebay does nothing about those fraudulent listings. Reporting to ebay does absolutely nothing. Somebody's got to give ebay a kick in the pants and get them to police their own site better. I'm not sympathetic to people to buy on ebay and get ripped off (because they should have known better) but the companies whose products are getting ripped off should have legal recourse.
 
This lawsuit will be thrown out of court. Selling counterfeit items on Ebay is already against the terms of service.

How can Ebay be held responsible for dishonest vendors who sell counterfeit knives?

They do not have the ability or resources to evaluate the origin of every item sold on their site.

Expecting them to do so is absurd.
 
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eBay UK, only sell kitchen and diy knives.:mad:

John.

I cannot tell you why.. But this made me laugh so hard, haha. Ahh.. Sorry, haha.

I think it's a good thing that Spyderco is trying to take control of this epidemic, but I do hope they don't invest too much into the outcome. If they fall belly up that could seriously damage the company from within.

eBay is one of those places where it seems anything goes, and they keep everything at an arms length away. Whiles it's good for the auction site, it's bad for the legitimate consumers.
 
How can Ebay be held responsible for dishonest vendors who sell counterfeit knives?
Because they don't do anything even when obviously counterfeit listings are reported to them.

I have never sold anything on ebay, so not sure how it works or if this might sound naive. But one way to do it might be to make an incentive to report fake items and for the counterfeit seller to be penalized. Make every seller have a paypal or credit card account linked to ebay. If there is a counterfeit reported, ebay or a third party administrator company would review the report. If it's true that it's a counterfeit and the seller should have known, then seller is penalized $500. Half that goes to the person who first reported the item as fake. Some of that goes to the third party administrator and some to ebay as well.
 
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