CraigsList and eBay Inc in lawsuit smackdown
By Leslie Poston
The two giants of the online yard sale and auction culture are at each other’s throats, using the legal system to fight their corporate battles. eBay, Inc. first sued CraigsList in April. This new lawsuit is a countersuit from CraigsList.
Why did eBay sue CraigsList in a Delaware court? eBay alleges that CaigsList is “unfairly discriminating” against it as a minority shareholder in CraigsList. More sepcifically it accuses CraigsList of what basically amounts to looking out for its business: holding meetings to which eBay was not invited to plan strategies to get eBay’s unwanted investment out of the CraigsList swimming pool.
CraigsList has now countered with a law suit that raises far more serious (and more believable) allegations against eBay. Namely, CraigsList alleges that eBay purchased a minority stake in the company for the sole purpose of ripping off corporate trade secrets. Frankly, this layperson thinks CraigsList lawsuit holds water, and eBay’s lawsuit is just the whining of a company that knows it has been caught hand in cookie jar.
The CraigsList lawsuit goes a bit further than accusations of trade secret espionage. CraigsList is also accusing eBay of sbotaging them via Google Ads by misdirecting people to eBay’s partner Kijiji instead of to CraigsList, and also copyright infringement, as the Kajiji ads were designed to look like CraigsList ads.
CraigsList wants the courts to require eBay to divest its holdings in CraigsList back to CraigsList. It also requests that eBay give CraigsList any profits made on the misleading ads and other nefarious practices detailed in the lawsuit.
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