THE TEXTILE WARS: ON TO COURT!!!

Occasionally something happens that is gratifying beyond one's wildest dreams. Readers who have had an eyeful of the textile wars know that this entire fracas originated in a fraudulent sale over eBay of 20 yards of "Scalamandre" velvet, such substandard stuff it did not deserve the label "velvet", let alone Scalamandre. As in the disturbances that wash outward when you drop a big stone into a pond, the ripples of this particular purchase are making waves, still.

Never mind Paypal for the moment, let's just give them a light slap for now - their turn will come. eBay, on the other hand, persists in trying to be a rapacious monster that devours everything in its path.

Case in point: anyone who wishes to sell to Australia or to the United Kingdom, from North America, must accept the purchase price via Paypal. Meaning that Paypal (and therefore eBay, which owns Paypal) gets a cut for handling the transaction, and another cut because sellers who use Paypal must accept credit card purchases, from which Paypal helps itself to another slice.

That's a lot of musts and cuts. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, speaking of cuts, this blog revealed in May that Junior Wollstein - the Divalicious, poor misguided one - Chris Wollstein had created a site called Fabriccut.com, and was trading on the long-established name and site of Fabricut.com, a legitimate company selling legitimate, properly identified fabrics.

Added 29/7/08: Well, it was not Junior this time but Senior - Ed Wollstein, owner of Boca Bargoons.

This blogger sent an email to Fabricut.com, asking for a formal comment from the company. Meanwhile, an industry insider, who has been absolutely priceless to us in the tracking down of fakes and fakers, also reported the website to the company, with the result that we have this little gem pop up on a search (We never did get a comment from Fabricut even after two requests.):


Fabricut, Inc. v. Belyeu et al
Plaintiff: Fabricut, Inc.
Defendant: James Belyeu and Ed Wollstein

Case Number: 4:2008cv00286
Filed: May 15, 2008

Court: Oklahoma Northern District Court
Office: Trademark Office [ Court Info ]
County: Tulsa
Presiding Judge: Judge Gregory K Frizzell
Referring Judge: Magistrate Judge Sam A Joyner

Nature of Suit: Intellectual Property - Trademark
Cause: Federal Question
Jurisdiction: Federal Question
Jury Demanded By: 15:1125 Trademark Infringement (Lanham Act)

Now you might ask yourself why Chris Wollstein's name does not appear here. As The Divalicious informed us, in this instance he kept his nose clean. But note this: The Divalicious has gone into full guerrilla mode, carrying on business as "Guerrilla Enterprise Developments", and this entity is also named in the lawsuiut. Strangely, one James S. Belyeu is nominal frontman for the Divalicious Guerrilla, who has taken to posting personal emails between himself and his father on his blog. They really are too puerile and boring for us even to put in a link.

The trademark infringement suit is poetic justice. One wonders how far gone the Divalicious actually is, to think that in this electronic time he can try to undercut a legitimate business by stealing their name.

And so we come full circle: stealing names is not a great idea. And a French court thought so, too. Earlier this week is levied a fat little penalty against eBay: 40 million Euros must be paid by eBay to LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA because eBay permitted the sale of fake French luxury goods. eBay - as readers of this blog also know - is always claiming that it only acts in the capacity of a "classified ad department" of a newspaper.

We've worked at enough newspapers to know that no ad department operates this way, no ad department also takes a cut of the selling price. That is what auction houses do and eBay - whether they like it or not - eBay is an electronic auction house that has been lax in the way it polices sellers.

One look at the site any day at all should persuade even the dimmest bulb at eBay's management that there can't possibly be that much authentic merchandise around - Tiffany, which sued eBay in the U.S. earlier this year and which still is waiting for a ruling, did some searches and found that ninetyfive percent of all "Tiffany" being sold was fake. The money is in selling the fakes - nobody is going to sell fake Walmart merchandise. So it is entirely possible that an enormous amount of the so-called "luxury" merchandise is simply fake.

eBay had the nerve to claim that Tiffany perhaps didn't do enough policing - we, eBay claimed proudly, spend twenty million dollars per year on policing. That isn't a whole lot of money for the size of the operation.

It is possible but usually worthless to report possibly fake auctions to eBay, which conveniently leaves no room for a person to elaborate on what might be fake. A recent sweep through eBay - advertising "Look what you can get for a dollar" - found dozens of fake "gold" rings with fake "gemstones" and fake "diamonds" and though they were reported they were not pulled, not one. If it were possible to say "the diamond is not a diamond because one can look through it to the fake gold of the setting", perhaps then eBay's "police" would take action. But the people they hire seem to be selected for their ability to follow a script and nothing more.

We are not going to diss the people working for eBay who after all need a job. It's the management of the company that needs to change, so that fake diamonds, fake Louis Vuitton, fake Tiffany, fake Scalamandre and such will be weeded out. And the likes of the Divalicious Guerrilla Chris Wollstein will not have another platform on which to put the foundations of his questionable empire.

c2008 bluemlein.blogspot.com