Courts rule on Ebay and Microsoft cases

An appeals court upheld a 2008 ruling that said Ebay is not liable for the sale of fake Tiffany jewellery on its auctions site. The court win marks another victory for Ebay against luxury goods makers, and spares Ebay from potentially devastating changes to its business.

But the appeals court returned the lawsuit to a lower court on a claim that some ads on Ebay that advertise Tiffany products may be misleading. Stricter advertising guidelines would be a nuisance for Ebay, but the with the 2008 ruling upheld, the auctions company is mostly in the clear.

“The ruling validates Ebay’s leading efforts to fight counterfeiting and its commitment to providing consumers with choice and value in a safe and trusted marketplace,” said Michael Jacobson, Ebay general counsel. ”We continue to support cooperation, rather than litigation, as the best way to address these issues in everyone’s best interests and we remain confident that the one remaining issue in the case will be decided favourably.”

Ebay continues to spar with luxury goods makers on both sides of the Atlantic. While this marks its latest victory in America, courts in Europe have been ruling in favour of LVMH, handing down two multi-million dollar judgements in recent months.

Meanwhile, a separate appeals court found against Microsoft on Thursday in another high-profile lawsuit involving a technology concern.

The software giant had asked for a full hearing by the 12 judges of the Federal circuit of the appeals court, in Washington, DC, to consider a patent infringement judgment that stands to cost it $290m.

The case was brought by I4i, a Canadian technology concern, which argued successfully in a lower court that Microsoft had infringed its intellectual property in the way it implemented XML in Word.

In December, a three-person appeals court panel rejected Microsoft’s attempt to overturn the judgment, and yesterday the company also failed in its bid for a fresh review by the full court.

Microsoft said it had yet to decide whether to pursue the case further, but hinted it would try to take it to the Supreme Court.

“As far as next steps, we continue to believe there are important matters of patent law that still need to be properly addressed, and we are considering our options for going forward,” the company said in a statement.