eBay's Fight Over Counterfeit Jewelry And What It Means For Online Dating

OPW -- May 4 -- Tiffany & Co. is in the process of appealing a judge’s ruling that does not hold eBay responsible for the sale of counterfeit merchandise, and if they succeed, it could mean bad news for online dating. Buyers take risks everyday when purchasing items listed on eBay. ~6,000 fake items are for sale on the site at any given time, usually famous luxury products. In June 2004, Tiffany & Co. decided eBay should take responsibility for the counterfeit Tiffany jewelry being sold on the site, and sued. The argument was over whose job it was to police the site to help prevent counterfeit merchandise from being passed off as authentic. Four years later, on July 14, 2008, the ruling came down from U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan: “eBay cannot be forced to police its listings to identify counterfeit products. It is the trademark owner's burden to police its mark.” Tiffany was devastated by the ruling, which contradicted several international rulings from the previous year. The previous month, a French court awarded LVMH, the parent company of Louis Vuitton, nearly $61m in compensation for fraudulent items sold on eBay. eBay was also ordered to stop all sales of LVMH perfumes on its French site. In 2007, Germany’s highest court said eBay needed to better police online sales to help stop fake Rolex watches from being sold. If eBay is going to be responsible to police their site for counterfeit products, will online dating websites then become fully responsible for seeking out and eliminating scammers and spammers? Both eBay and online dating sites essentially deal with the publication of classified ads, and making the service provider responsible for policing one type of classified could easily be translated into the responsibility of all providers of that type. A lawsuit was recently filed against eHarmony.com claiming that the site does not actually have a scientific matching system in place, and one woman was matched with a scam artist. If a ruling is made in favor of Tiffany & Co., could dating sites then be sued for the simple fact that a scam artist was in their system to be matched with women looking for love? Only time will tell, but none of the implications are positive for the online dating industry.

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Comments

[Ross Williams]

Mark, you've missed your normal disclosure here - Iovation, the anti-scam technology is your customer :)

I think online dating is a fair way from being hit with this kind of legislation - fundamentlaly, eBay makes money from selling scam merchandise. However, most dating companies know that scammers reduce retention and increase churn - so on a purely financial basis it makes no sense to harbour scammers.

That said, it is a difficult thing to police - technology is part of it, but people and culture within the dating company are also important. We've started targeting our customer service teams and bonusing them on the number of scammers removed, helping them to be as pro-active as possible and make life as hard as possible for scammers.

This piece above should be taken with a pinch of salt - it's certainly worth following but I would put a bunch of other larger industries above online dating for any legislation.