California Retailer Sues eBay and eBay Seller for Trademark Infringement

[mandy]

A California retailer that sells miniature furniture and home accessories is suing online auction site eBay Inc. for refusing to take down auctions that it claims infringe on its trademark.

Hansson Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif., filed the lawsuit late last month against eBay and an eBay seller in Atlantic City that it claims has been selling miniature furniture on the auction site under the Hansson name since Aug. 1, 2004...

Hansson claims that since Aug. 30, 2007, it has sent eBay eight takedown notices as well as one cease-and0desist letter, but the auction company has not responded. In order to get eBay's attention, Hansson decided to sue for contributory trademark infringement, according to court documents...

full article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/arti...ticleBasic&articleId=9051738

more:

2) What is the appropriate legal standard for eBay's liability? This is a big open question mark in Cyberlaw. 230 doesn't apply by its terms to federal trademark claims, and 512 only applies to copyright. eBay might be able to claim the innocent printer/publisher defense in 15 USC 1114(2), although Hansson has alleged that eBay has the requisite scienter to negate "innocence." So at the moment, eBay's risk of contributory liability may be governed by the common law of contributory trademark liability, and we really don't have many good/illustrative precedents for how this applies to a platform like eBay's. We're closely watching the Tiffany v. eBay lawsuit in NY, which is an analogous lawsuit, but we don't have any useful precedent from that yet. So should eBay be liable if they actually received notice of infringement and failed to take down the noticed auctions? Perhaps...

full article: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/200..._for_n.htm
copy of the lawsuit: http://claranet.scu.edu/tempfiles/tmp357...plaint.pdf