eBay has always faced scrutiny for its allowance of auctions selling a variety of pirated software.  A trade group representing hundreds of software vendors is considering a lawsuit against the company for what it calls “widespread sales of counterfeit software on the auction site.”

The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) has offered eBay several suggestions for putting a stop to the sale of pirated software, but the auction giant has rejected most of them. The group is about out of options, and if eBay continues without any changes, litigation is the last option, according to PC World. 

Instead of going after the individual sellers in the eBay community, the group plans to charge eBay with secondary copyright infringement to finally put a stop to the abuse.  eBay hasn’t said much on the subject but has reiterated that its put volume restriction on software vendors and has eliminated the option of short-term auctions for such sellers as well, according to eBay spokeswoman Nichola Sharpe.

“We can’t be the experts on what’s fake or not,” Sharpe said in March. “We’re not the experts on counterfeits.” she went on to say speaking of eBay’s VERO (Verified Rights Owner) program, which allows rights owners the opportunity to contact eBay about infringement and to get the auctions stopped and deleted from the site.

eBay is no stranger to litigation.  Earlier this month, it was sued by both Tiffany Jewelry and Christian Dior Couture for trademark infringement stemming from a large amount of fake items being sold almost every day on the site.  eBay’s position on the subject was that they do everything in their power to remove fake items such as these the minute they’re reported.  A judge sided in favor of eBay in both cases stating that trademark law does not require eBay to preemptively remove listings such as these.  In the judge’s mind, eBay did everything it could to stop it and therefore was not at fault.

I would have to agree only because of the sheer multitude of listing that go through the site every day.  It’s not feasible for eBay to literally monitor each and every listing for the variety of infractions that aren’t allowed.  All they can do to curb such action is to proactively pull any listings that are reported to them in the shortest time possible, which is apparently what they’ve been doing all along.

An SIIA lawsuit would likely focus on copyright infringement rather than trademark infringement, and there’s a more established track record of secondary copyright infringement lawsuits, according to Keith Kupferschmid, senior vice president of the SIIA’s antipiracy division.

There’s really no way of stopping infringement of any kind on a site as widely used as eBay.  Companies can try and try to stop it through litigation, but ultimately, they’re facing an uphill battle and wasting their time and money. 

Related:

Entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 5:08 pm under Piracy.

Read more entries by Justin Montgomery.
Stumble It!