Indemnifying eBay against Legal fees?....

grk850 · #1 10-17-2018

has anyone ever received an email asking them to sign a waiver indemnifying eBay against legal fees for trademark infringement? extract here..i havent signed it and incredibly it doesnt seem to be a scam. the account remains restricted for listing new items...the "infringement" happened to be my listing wording getting shortened creating a trademarked name by mistake, so not even a real case. signing it would open up unlimited legal risk i think?

part of the email..
2. I will indemnify eBay from all claims that third parties may claim against eBay because of the violation of my obligations in clause 1. I will pay for the necessary legal costs of eBay including court fees and legal fees up to the amount provided for by the law. This does not apply if I am not responsible for the violation.

3. For every singly future violation I will pay a contractual penalty of 1.000 Euro to SOS-Kinderdorf Berlin-Moabit. The penalty can be enforced by any of the eBay companies. In that event please pay the amount to:

phaz0rz · #2 10-17-2018

That's crazy. Never seen it before. As far as I'm aware, in USA eBay cannot be sued for something listed by a seller on their site. Same goes for Amazon and their 3rd party sellers. They had legislation lobbied through to protect them from exactly that. That's why all listings say "seller assumes all responsibility for listing's contents" or something very similar to that.

Honestly I'm quite surprised they are even giving you this option instead of just restricting your account permanently. If this is a stealth account I don't see any harm in signing it. Especially if your trademark violation was an accident and you won't be getting any more of them now that you know what you did wrong.

grk850 · #3 10-17-2018

sadly not stealth, but I know better now! I wonder if it just the .de eBay. the email had spelling mistakes as well. It seems to be legit tho as I went through all of the eBay online chat etc. No account can be worth an open legal chequebook to eBay I would think. Interesting to see if its common. so far it doesn't seem it is. Problem with signing is that the company alleging infringement seems to be a shell company specifically designed to exploit this "frightener tactic"