The appeals court that recently decided the eBay and Tiffany matter noted that eBay has spent millions on taking steps to ferret out illegal and counterfeit listings including a program that lets owners of intellectual property report potentially infringing listings to eBay, so eBay can remove them.

This sort of set-up mirrors the notice and take-down procedure common in internet law, whereby for instance a party who feels copyright is infringed by a webpage, or that a webpage is libellous, simply informs the host of the page and they (to avoid future legal proceedings) immediately remove the page as they no longer have the defence of innocence.

During the relevant time period, the [court of first instance found that] eBay 'never refused to remove a reported Tiffany listing, acted in good faith in responding to Tiffany's NOCIs [notices of claimed infringement], and always provided Tiffany with the seller's contact information

The court went on to say that:

To impose liability because eBay cannot guarantee the genuineness of all of the purported Tiffany products offered on its Web site would unduly inhibit the lawful resale of genuine Tiffany goods