EU Court Adviser: L’Oreal Can Stop Selling Of Samples On EBay
Written on December 6, 2010 by Maragaret Harrison
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BRUSSELS (Dow Jones) — EBay inc. (EBAY), the online marketplace, may have to change the measures it takes to protect the trademarks of cosmetics company L’Oreal SA (OR.FR) following an opinion by the European Court of Justice’s advocate general Niilo Jaaskinen Thursday on a case being heard in the U.K.
In a complex case covering several areas, the U.K. High Court of Justice asked the ECJ, Europe’s highest court, a number of questions relating to its preliminary ruling on L’Oreal vs. eBay. The ECJ normally rules between three and six months after the advocate general’s opinion and follows his recommendations in the majority of cases.
“Testers and dramming bottles, often marked with the words ‘not for sale’… supplied without charge to the trade mark proprietor’s authorised distributors cannot be considered as being goods put on the market with the consent of the trade mark proprietor,” the ECJ said in a statement. “It is therefore still up to the trade mark proprietor to decide if he intends to put these products on the market and he can also prohibit the sale of such products.”
L’Or�al first notified eBay it of its concerns about its goods on eBay’s European websites in 2007 and requested eBay to take steps to address those concerns. L’Or�al was not satisfied with eBay’s response and brought an action before the High Court in London claiming that eBay was jointly liable for the infringements committed by its users.
The potential infringements referred to in the court’s official journal included eBay users selling samples of L’Oreal perfumes and cosmetics which were intended to be distributed for free, removing outer boxes from perfumes and cosmetics before selling them via eBay, and selling L’Oreal products which were intended for markets outside of Europe.
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