eBay VeRO Program: What is it & How Does it Work?
The eBay Verified Rights Owners (VeRO) program protects the copyright and trademark rights of intellectual property owners of items traded on the global eBay online auction marketplace venue.
While giving IP rights owners the ability to protect their property, many observers claim the system is too easy to abuse. You can read eBay's own overview of the VeRO program here.
So what is VeRO and is it good or, as some claim, bad?
Firstly, let me explain how the system works. The verified owner of a brand, trademark, copyright etc. can remove a listing on eBay if they believe the item offered is a fake, illegal copy or any other type of unauthorised use of their intellectual property. I stress it is the property owner that causes an offending listing to be taken down. Neither eBay or the lister plays a part in this process.
Now this may seem all well and good if the item taken down iS an illegal use of the VeRO owners intellectual property. But the complaints usually start when a listing is cancelled that isn't a VeRO abuse according to the seller. Claims have been made that over-zealous use of the scheme is being made by some IP owners in order to remove potential competition on eBay or even remove a brand entirely from eBay exposure. There have even been claims that competitor eBay sellers have abused the VeRO system just to damage each other. But, whether these claims are justified or not, what is the alternative?
People predictably blame eBay for these problems and say it's simply a lack of resourcing on their part. While I accept it's not a perfect world and there will probably never be enough eyes policing eBay, it is unrealistic in my opinion to expect eBay to do more on the VeRO issue and the potential abuse of it.
eBay staff can never hope to be in a position to judge with 100% certainty whether a listed item is a straightforward fake or copyright infringement. IP owners on the other hand will have far deeper knowledge of their own products to make such judgements. So I accept the policing of IP rights within an online venue the size of eBay is best kept with the owners. Along with the ability to police their own property comes the responsibility to police it correctly and fairly.
The clinching argument for me is the legal viewpoint. It has been suggested that the VeRO program should only allow IP owners to report infringements to eBay allowing the auction site to judge if a report is valid before removing a listing. In this case, under the terms of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, apart from the offending seller eBay themselves would potentialy become jointly liable for any subsequent proven rights infringement. Given the scale of eBay and it's global nature surely anyone in their position would recognise the danger this represents and adopt procedures to avoid it.
So, by removing eBay from the VeRO listing removal process the liabilities remains clear:
The seller of an item takes total responsibility for the legitimacy of the item.
If the VeRO process is abused then the resulting dispute is between the seller and the IP owner that caused the listing to be taken down.
Many will argue that the small individual seller has no hope of fighting the unwarranted attention of a big brand owner and I accept that may be the case. But until I hear someone put forward a better alternative to the current VeRO system then it's the best we have and the best we can hope for.
In a marketplace the size of eBay there will inevitably be more cases of IP theft reported and more claims of VeRO abuse. I recognise eBay is not perfect and probably never will be but, having been quick to criticise them in the past for many things, not least the need to clean up their marketplace, I should now acknowledge that eBay has done extremely well clearing out bad listings in recent years.
As a result of these efforts I assume IP owners will soon start to see what most copyright pirates already know - there are alternatives to eBay. It will be interesting to see how many of the alternative sites have a robust workable procedure like VeRO in place to protect themselves - particularly when they attract significant listing numbers.
Feel free to voice your own views about VeRO using the comments system below.
20.07.2010. 13:55
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