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eBay loses another French trade mark case

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

The IPKat has been a little slow in reporting on Monday's decision of the Paris Commercial Court to order eBay to pay 40 million euros to Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior Couture and various perfume brands owned by the LVMH group (see the Times article here). The main reason appears to be damage to the reputation of the various trade marks caused by the sale of counterfeit products. The court pointed to 'serious faults' in the way eBay ran the site. eBay has said it will appeal.

The dispute concerning the perfumes was somewhat different as there the argument was that eBay shouldn't allow genuine products to be sold on its sites because this would interfere with LVMH's exclusive distribution network.

The IPKat would dearly love to know how the sums for the damages were calculated. Surely there aren't so many people in France who would have bought a genuine Louis Vuitton bag but decided not to because of the eBay alternative? If the damage was for harm to Louis Vuitton's reputation, does this mean that the French court has stumbled on the secret for calculating how much damage harming a mark's exclusivity does? As for the the perfumes, the IPKat is scratching his head as to how this accords with the rules of exhaustion of rights (assuming that is that the eBay perfume originates in the EU).

Full post as published by IPKat on July 02, 2008 (boomark / email).