Tiffany and eBay in Court over Trademark Violations

More than three years after it sued eBay for trademark violations, luxury jeweler Tiffany & Co stood in a New York District court alleging that the online auction site did not do enough to prevent the sale of counterfeit goods.

Going as far as calling it turning a blind eye, Tiffany said that 73 percent of silver items it randomly bought on eBay were counterfeit and only 5 percent of the items were genuine. The rest were “Tiffany-like.”

The lawsuit asks for eBay to account for profits it made on the sale of counterfeit Tiffany merchandise or else pay up to $1 million for each type of fake Tiffany merchandise.

EBay said it did not have any legal responsibilities as a middleman in the transactions on its site and that it would not be practical to validate every item that was sold since there are around 50,000 groups of products for sale on eBay.

During the court hearing Tuesday, eBay said it spends more than $10 million a year to prevent the sale of counterfeit merchandise. According to eBay’s lawyer Bruce Rich, the site uses a program that helps companies prevent fake goods from being sold on its site.

In October 2003, the district court in New York awarded Tiffany & Co damages of $574,000 from the owners of a web site that sold counterfeit Tiffany merchandise.