Anybody use Ebay VeRO? How effective is it at protecting IP?
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We’ve used it ourselves a few times, invariably with success.
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Used it a bunch of times, invariably the eBay seller copies the entire Amazon listing, including photos, so the copyrighting of one’s Amazon listing text and photos “as submitted” is a very few dollars ($45) well-spent, as the copyright/DMCA “takedown” is the easiest.
These all seem to be people who want to play “retail arbitrage”, and take an order off eBay, and then place an order to have the item delivered by Amazon, selling at well above the Amazon price. I guess we should not care about this “additional business”, but we worry about the product support, which would be non-existent on eBay, so down the listings must come.
The question of why eBay continues to allow such trademark and copyright infringement to take place on their site prompted us to write a very stern letter to eBay asking why they cannot put a filter in the listing creation process to halt attempts to list “frequently pirated trademarks” like ours.
We shall see if the number of such listing attempts goes to zero, or at least down as a result, as eBay is misleading their sellers into thinking that they can get away with this nonsense, and then spends the time and money to run “VeRO” to tell them “no, you can’t actually do that” after the fact.
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Ebay is not going to add the barriers to entry that Amazon has erected with its category and brand approval processes. They cost too much and Ebay is not at risk thanks to Section 230, and their niche is online sales without the Amazon hassle.
Ebay has no motivation to deal with the issue.
Ebay’s sales of branded, in production product decrease every reporting period. They acknowledge it and plan for it. Just as Amazon has ceased to view Ebay as a competitor, Ebay does not compete with Amazon, although some sellers still do.
Enforcing trademarks and copyrights is the responsibility of the rightsholder. VeRo is Ebay’s concession to them.
The sellers who believe they can get away with it are sellers who the rightsholders have allowed to get away with it.
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This is what we use for VeRO submittals.
We find it works 95% of the time, now that we nailed down the exact wording they want in the VeRO claim. Waiting a day or two, and resubmitting after a rejection brings that to 99%.
I will add what we use here feel free to use it. Your results may vary.
Be sure to edit it where I have noted that requirement. I got this from an ebay employee, after being refused many times. My notes are Bold Italic, all other text is required.
[email protected] (send to this email address)
Subject (Enter in the Subject Line) NOCI Catalog Page Number (Enter Page Number Here) Seller (Enter Ebay Seller Name Here)
Notice of Claimed Infringement
Intellectual Property (IP) Owner Name: (Enter your Corporation or LLC name here) DBA (Enter if it applies, eg, your brand name)Reporter Information – All required except as noted
Name and Title: (Enter Your Name, Your Title)Company Name (if different than IP Owner Name): (I repeat from above enter yours)
Mailing Address: (Enter your full address)Email Address (for communication with eBay) (Enter your email address)
Email Address (for communication with sellers) (Enter the email you want eBay to provide to others, we use “legal@ourwebsite” we set up a blind refer to our standard eBay address)
Phone Number: (Enter your phone number)
Website (optional): (Enter your Brand Website)
Declaration
I have a good faith belief, and do solemnly and sincerely declare, that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the Intellectual Property Owner, its agent, or the law. The information in this Notice of Claimed Infringement is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, I am authorized to act on behalf of the Intellectual Property Owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.Signature: (Enter Your typed Signature)
Date: (Enter the date)
Allegedly Infringing Material
Allegedly Infringing Item Number(s) (Enter Item Numbers here) Product URL(s): https://www.ebay.com/itm/(Enter Offending Page Number)
(If needed add more lines for more offenses with the same seller)Reason Code (select only ONE from list on page 2): 4.3 (This is the use of text and images section)
Description of why you believe listing(s) infringes your rights: The offender, Seller (Enter Offending Seller Name Here) has used our images and text from our website and other eCommerce Chanel’s. No permission was given, All rights reserved © (Enter Your Brand, Your Company)
Registration information and jurisdiction of applicable intellectual property right: (Enter Registration of Brand and (for us) State of registration)
Be sure to replace ALL bold italic notes with your information or delete if appropriate. All other text is from the sample email sent to us by ebay support. They want the VeRO submittal exactly like this. Much of our fails were not completing without all the information included.
Send as a text only file by email to [email protected]. They will respond that the listing has been taken down, or that you made an error on filing. We did have only one eBay seller that challenged us.
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Is email better than filing online?
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We use the portal with about 95-99% success rate as a rights owner. Listings are removed in about 48-72 hours. Cut and paste for the majority of the items. They want links to your IP so make sure your stuff is up to date.
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For us it was, and continues to be. To quote the eBay Seller Rep that helped us, “Stop using the online form, you just keep getting it wrong. Follow this format exactly and (definitely) email it in.”
That was at least 8 years ago, but it has worked since.
You can bite at the interloper as many times as you want. eBay never shut me down or complained even when I made an error. I was very surprised how helpful, even compassionate the Seller Rep was.
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So we are in an odd state right now, as it relates to listing on our different channels and our own brand websites.
Working up that form got me thinking, I should go take a look. Found one! On eBay and a scraper that got everything from Amazon. Offered “Free Return Shipping” and listed it at more than 2X our sell price.
Looking at the feedback they have, several negatives from very upset people with
gift receipts and boxes from Amazon. “I bought on eBay since I DID NOT want to buy on Amazon!” Was one of them.
Here is the response to my submittal. Came back in less that 24 hours.
The content you reported was removed
Hello My eBay ID,
Thanks again for reporting the problematic content you found.What happened:
We looked into your report and removed the content. It may take up to 24 hours for it to reflect on the site. This determination was made by a customer service agent.We let the content uploader know about this decision and the action taken. They may have the option to fix the content to make it visible again on site. They can also appeal our decision, and we’ll review the case again and may reverse the original decision and action taken.
If you reported content that isn’t included in the below reference ID, we’ll send a separate email once we’ve made a decision.
Your reference ID: New Number here
Here are the listings you reported that have been removed:
Item: number of the listing I reported, Product title used by the interloper, a copy of our Amazon Title…Thank you for being part of the eBay community.
Thanks,
eBayPlease don’t reply to this message. It was sent from an address that doesn’t accept incoming email.
Smoke em if you got em.
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