Infringement is the unauthorised use of other people’s intellectual property, like copyrighted material and trademarks.
Rules that affect what you can sell on eBay
The following items are restricted or prohibited because they would potentially infringe on intellectual property rights.
- Replica, counterfeit items and unauthorised copies
- Celebrity material including faces, names and signatures, and autographs
- Media - movie prints (35 mm, 70 mm), bootleg recordings, recordable media, promotional copies and digitally delivered goods.
- Software including academic software, beta software, OEM software
- Equipment that would support unauthorised copies including mod chips, game enhancers, and boot discs and hardware or software that would enable members to duplicate copy-protected material.
Rules that affect how you list items for sale
In an item listing, eBay members cannot:
- Encourage or enable others to infringe copyrights, trademarks or other rights.
- Improperly use eBay Intellectual Property (including use of the eBay name, logo or linking to the eBay Web site).
- Include authenticity disclaimers or deny responsibility for the items offered in their listings.
- Use another member’s item description or picture without their permission. (To contact eBay about another member who is using your text or images without your permission, follow the steps in the "Reporting Listing Violations" section below)
Activity on eBay is required to follow this policy, the eBay User Agreement and all applicable laws, as well as respect the rights of third parties. If it doesn’t, eBay may take action consistent with applicable laws and the eBay User Agreement, and may even be legally required to do so. Such actions may include, as an example only: Removing the listing or other content, issuing a warning, restricting activity or account suspension.
eBay’s VeRo Programme – Reporting Listing Violations
eBay created the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Programme - opens in new window or tab so that intellectual property owners could easily report listings that infringe their rights. It is in eBay’s interest to ensure that infringing items are removed from the site, as they erode buyer and good seller trust.
If you are a Verified Rights Owner and want to report a listing issue, the following steps are for reporting a listing to eBay. Only the intellectual property rights owner can report potentially infringing items or listings through eBay's VeRO Programme. If you are not the intellectual property rights owner, you can still help by getting in touch with the rights owner and encouraging them to contact us. For a list of rights owners who participate in our VeRO programme, view the list of About Me Pages.
Step One:
If you have a good faith belief that a listing on eBay infringes your copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights, all you need to do is download our Notice of Claimed Infringement (NOCI) form, fill it out, and fax it to eBay. Please click the country you are in to download the Notice of Claimed Infringement (NOCI) form:
- Singapore - opens in new window or tab
- Malaysia - opens in new window or tab
- Philippines - opens in new window or tab
Note: You will need Adobe® Acrobat Reader to view and print our NOCI form. You can download a free copy - opens in new window or tab at Adobe's Web site.
Step Two:
After we receive your first NOCI, eBay will send you an electronic version of our NOCI form as well as instructions on how to submit future reports electronically.
Step Three:
We encourage you to educate eBay users about your products and legal positions by creating an "About Me" page. We have found that many of our users cease listing potentially infringing items when presented with such information.
Once you have posted your About Me page, send us an email and we will include it in our list of Intellectual Property Rights Owner About Me pages.
If your listing was removed through VeRO, and you believe that your listing was removed in error, eBay suggests that you first try to contact the rights owner directly (The email notifying you that your listing had been removed should have included the rights owner's email address). Only the rights owner understands their products and intellectual property rights. If the rights owner agrees that they made a mistake, have them email eBay and eBay will allow you to relist your item.
- Avoid having your listing removed through VeRO in the future. Review the list of VeRO Programme Participant About Me pages. Participants have created an About Me page that contains information designed to help you understand why they requested the removal of your listing.
- How eBay helps to ensure that listings aren’t mistakenly removed. A rights owner reporting through VeRO must be registered through VeRO before reporting items to us. Rights owners sign legally binding documents when reporting items to eBay.
- How your personal information may be released. eBay will never give out your credit card information, except in rare cases when required by a court of law, or law enforcement agency. However, eBay’s Privacy Policy states, "Further, we can (and by becoming an eBay member you authorise us to) disclose your User ID, name, street address, city, state, post code, country, phone number, email and company to eBay Verified Rights Owner Programme participants as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, piracy or other activity that may expose us to legal liability or as otherwise permitted under applicable laws."