A letter from eBay's Douglas McCallum regarding our fight against counterfeits

Dear Customer,

I’m sure you will have read media reports over the past few days concerning a French court ruling in a lawsuit against eBay.

We want you, our customers, to know and trust how much we do behind the scenes to stop counterfeits from ever making their way onto our sites. It’s not just about money but we do invest millions every year in keeping our site free of counterfeits. In 2007, across all eBay sites around the world, we removed over 2 million potentially counterfeit listings, and we suspended over 50,000 sellers whom we believed may have been attempting to sell fake goods.

Indeed, our efforts to remove counterfeits from our site – often before anyone is able to see them, let alone buy them – are recognised by thousands of manufacturers who we successfully work with to combat counterfeiters.

While recognising the importance of fighting counterfeits, we do not agree with overly broad attempts to protect uncompetitive commercial practices of authentic items at the expense of consumer choice, which threatens the livelihood of our law-abiding sellers and the ability of our buyers to get great deals.

Overzealous implementation of restrictive sales practices are anti-competitive and give you, our buyers and sellers a bad deal. This is recognised by European Union policy-makers who are seeking to create a better framework for online sales to promote e-commerce in Europe. We support a free and fair market in Europe and the benefits this will bring for you.

We will continue to fight against counterfeits but we will not accept outdated attempts to restrict unfairly the Internet to the detriment of our community. We will continue to fight for consumer value through e-commerce. We are appealing the ruling in France.

Douglas S. McCallum

Senior Vice President, eBay Marketplaces, Europe