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Intellectual Property Law

: IPKat

BREAKING NEWS: UK High Court: L'Oreal vs. eBay - another win for ebay

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

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Eagerly awaited and just out today is the UK High Court's decision in L'Oreal vs. eBay.

While the Kat has not yet seen the actual decision, early media reports inform the Kat that eBay has again emerged successful from a trade mark infringement action brought against it by cosmetics giant L'Oréal. Similar to the The Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris in the recent French proceedings (see the IPKat's report here), the UK High Court appears to have considered that eBay has met its legal obligation to combat fake products.

The Paris-based cosmetics giant L'Oreal, which had brought similar proceedings in several European countries, had argued that online auction site eBay did not do enough to prevent the sale of counterfeit goods such as perfumes and cosmetics. Broadly speaking L'Oreal's position was that eBay should be liable for counterfeit and parallel imported goods sold via its website, and that eBay should do more to prevent the sale of such trade mark infringing goods. After today's decision, there are now three decisions in favour of eBay (UK, France and Belgium), one decision in favour of L'Oreal (Germany) and one decision (from Spain) still outstanding.

According to a report by Kathy Sandler of Dow Jones Newswires, the court appears to have taken the view that the relevant European trade mark law provisions and the eCommerce Directive "were unclear, referring such issues to the European Court of Justice for further guidance".

The IPKat will update his readers once he has seen the actual decision.

Full post as published by IPKat on May 22, 2009 (boomark / email).