Trouble at eBay?

There was an intersting story in the NY Times (The article in the Times was so poorly written, I won't even link to it. Such a rarity for the Times as it is such a great paper. I digress.) this week about eBay being sued by Tiffany's alledging that eBay is allowing fake Tiffany Merchandise on their website. The lawsuit is alleging that eBay is essentially turning a blind eye the the fake merchandise and taking in a pretty sum off of the conterfeit sales.

Now, I'm not going to take sides, but I'll lay my cards on the table. I used to work at eBay. I worked their for four years. I know the ins, the outs and all the in betweens. eBay's cop-out and what I perceive as their defense to this lawsuit is simply "Hey, we don't police our site." My answer to that is: hogwash.

eBay goes to great lengths to police their site-ever try to look at pornographic pictures on the core site? You won't find any. This is because their are constant searches done on the site (either automatic or manual) that go through and basically look for all the 'illegal' auctions.

eBay also claims that Tiffany is working through eBay's VeRO program (Verified Rights and Owners). This program simply helps high end manufacturers of goods maintain the dignified brand name when their merchandise is sold through secondary avenues such as eBay.

When I was at eBay, they had three shifts of fifteen people who worked to enforce the rules of VeRO, and constantly looked for items on the site that violated eBay's VeRO policy. Now, obviously it's hard to police every corner of the eBay site, just by the sheer magnitude of the number of items that are sold, it's nearly impossible to find every nefarious auction. However, eBay's blanket statement of 'We don't police our site' is plain and simple BS.

Even with all the policing that eBay does, there is still a large amount of fake material sold on their site. In specific regards to Tiffany's, I would say anywhere between 80-90% of the items are fake.

I would be very, very surprised to see this case actually go to trial. However, if eBay decides to settle, it can expect a whole onslaught of lawsuits similar to this one.