The union told news agency Reuters that it believed that eBay
was not doing enough to combat sales of fake goods through its
auctions. It is about to file a complaint to prosecutors about eBay
and other auction sites.
Auction sites have traditionally been reluctant to monitor
auctions because of the huge numbers of items listed, but lawsuits
have been brought against them. France was at the centre of one of
those in 2001 when it ordered that Yahoo!'s US auction site ban
listings of Nazi and Ku Klux Klan related material from being
available for sale in France.
"We think eBay is perfectly capable of policing its site, but
they offer to take action only after the fact. They refuse to act
pre-emptively," Unifab chairman Marc Antoine Jamet told Reuters.
"We think they have the IT to manage their sites, to track bank
accounts and ownership."
EBay says that it has an anti-counterfeit scheme and that it
does monitor auctions for goods that clearly infringe
manufacturers' rights. The company encourages copyright holders to
contact it regarding any auctions of goods that violate copyrights.
It is understood that in some situations eBay does proactively
monitor some auctions using keywords.
Jamet is an executive with French luxury goods company Louis
Vuitton Moet Hennessy, LVMH, which now tracks counterfeit sales
online. He said that the case would seek damages to recover losses
caused by counterfeit sales.
The development is the latest French move taking on the might of
Silicon Valley. France has long legislated to keep Hollywood from
dominating its cinemas and is now legislating to prevent US
technology companies from taking control of its cultural and
business landscapes.
The French parliament passed a law this year demanding that
Apple ensures that music sold on its iTunes site could be played by
devices other than its own iPod. It also legislated to control the
sale of Nazi memorabilia on online auction sites, a move which
affected all Yahoo! and eBay sites, and not just those designed
specifically for the French market.
A French court ruled earlier this year that Google had to pay a
€300,000 fine because it carried advertisements for counterfeit
goods on its sites.
"There is a continent which makes the fakes, which is China, and
there is a continent where they are sold, and that is the
internet," Jamet told Reuters.
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