This has been all over the news, but if you've been living under a rock or maybe the moon, you may have missed the news that Tiffany's is suing eBay. It's long been known that some disreputable eBay sellers deal in counterfeit merchandise, and it looks like Tiffany's has said enough already:

From Forbes.com: "Tiffany [...] the purveyor of jewelry, timepieces, silver, china, stationery, crystal and ubiquitous Elsa Peretti-designed coffee bean necklaces, is suing online auction giant eBay [...] for helping to flog counterfeit jewelry. The Tiffany lawsuit, in addition to accusing eBay of facilitating counterfeiting, also contends that Meg Whitman's eBay charges hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for counterfeit sales."




I have to admit to having mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it reminds me of a flea market set up where sellers may be selling counterfeit jewelry or other items and the owner of the flea market may not know it. So, why should the owner be responsible? But, on the other hand, from the other news reports I've been reading, eBay has been told about certain unlawful merchants and refused to shut them down.

It will be interesting to see the fall out.