Public Citizen Litigation Group said it filed a lawsuit against Dymo Corp. on behalf of Rene Mohl on April 24, 2006. The lawsuit seeks to guarantee Rene F. Mohl the right to tell eBay users that he is selling printer labels compatible with printers made by Dymo. The lawsuit also seeks to prevent Dymo from interfering with future sales of the compatible printer labels and to compensate Mohl for lost sales.
According to Greg Beck of Public Citizen, Dymo began invoking eBay's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program to terminate Mohl's auctions of compatible labels. Dymo claimed that by stating the labels were compatible with Dymo printers, Mohl was infringing the company's "Dymo" trademark. After several VeRO terminations, Mohl had to remove the Dymo name from his listings in order to avoid the risk of losing his eBay account. As a result, it is very difficult for people to find his compatible labels, according to Beck, and he has suffered a major loss in sales.
"This is just another example of how corporations are exploiting eBay's Verified Rights Owners program to curtail legitimate competition by small online retailers," Beck said.
Disputes between Intellectual Property rights holders and eBay sellers are not new. This article from 2003 profiles a husband-and-wife selling team who have battled companies over VeRO issues http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y03/m08/i05/s02.
eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy said that since eBay was not a party to the Dymo lawsuit, it would be inappropriate to comment on it.
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2183
