US trade mark owners must police their own marks on eBay

Abstract

In the summer of 2008, a series of international litigation disputes between eBay and various trade mark owners whose goods are sold on the eBay website began to heat up. The disputes generally centred on what the respective responsibilities of policing counterfeit sales of trade marked goods should be between eBay on the one side (as the host of its eBay websites where third parties conduct private auctions), and the trade mark owners of the goods that are being auctioned on the other side.