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Home / counterfeits / ebay / exhaustion / france / trade marks / eBay loses another French trade mark case

eBay loses another French trade mark case

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The IPKat has been a little slow in reporting on Monday's decision of the Paris Commercial Court to order eBay to pay 40 million euros to Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior Couture and various perfume brands owned by the LVMH group (see the Times article here). The main reason appears to be damage to the reputation of the various trade marks caused by the sale of counterfeit products. The court pointed to 'serious faults' in the way eBay ran the site. eBay has said it will appeal.

The dispute concerning the perfumes was somewhat different as there the argument was that eBay shouldn't allow genuine products to be sold on its sites because this would interfere with LVMH's exclusive distribution network.

The IPKat would dearly love to know how the sums for the damages were calculated. Surely there aren't so many people in France who would have bought a genuine Louis Vuitton bag but decided not to because of the eBay alternative? If the damage was for harm to Louis Vuitton's reputation, does this mean that the French court has stumbled on the secret for calculating how much damage harming a mark's exclusivity does? As for the the perfumes, the IPKat is scratching his head as to how this accords with the rules of exhaustion of rights (assuming that is that the eBay perfume originates in the EU).
eBay loses another French trade mark case eBay loses another French trade mark case Reviewed by Anonymous on Wednesday, July 02, 2008 Rating: 5

3 comments:

  1. FrédéricWednesday, 2 July 2008 at 21:25:00 GMT+1

    In fact there are three decisions issued by the Tribunal de Commerce de Paris, which can be downloaded from pmdm.fr :
    http://www.pmdm.fr/wp/2008/06/30/ebay-lourdement-condamne-en-premiere-instance/

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousThursday, 3 July 2008 at 08:50:00 GMT+1

    Re the handbags, I assume the damages weren't all for instances where Ebay was notified but failed to take down. Any idea why the French court believed Ebay had a general obligation to monitor (as expressly prohibited under the e-commerce directive)?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousWednesday, 23 July 2008 at 15:54:00 GMT+1

    does anyone know where you can get hold of all 3 English translations of the judgments?

    ReplyDelete

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