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Ebay Bass - Legal Issue???

#41
phillipkregg said:
For instance, I am currently doing work for a large (over 1000 employees) cleaning and restoration business that has a particular trademarked color scheme. A guy in Florida recently attempted to copy the color scheme onto a personal van and advertised himself with a similar name and provided similar services. Our company immediately had lawyers contact him and threatened to sue. Of course, he stopped.

That was just one dude in a van.

It all depends on the copyright holder and how aggressively they want to pursue things. And, of course, it depends on the regional laws involved. Like someone mentioned earlier copyright and trademark infringement laws could vary with the countries involved.
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Sorry to keep harping on this, because it really doesn't matter to me at all, but you're totally missing the point. Your company in the US threatened to sue a guy in the US. Laws within the US apply to people within the US. Duh! A legal threat has meaning in that context. The Ebayer here is in China. Laws in the US do not apply to people in China. Furthermore, while the Chinese government makes occasional token gestures to crack down on Chinese companies violating international property rights, the vast majority of the time China is the world's largest source of counterfeited goods and copied designs, and it makes such a huge amount of money for the country that they are not inclined to enforce any complaints against these copiers. Additionally, this Ebayer is small potatoes as far as the US and Chinese trade legislators are concerned. Maybe if Sinopec or Baosteel violated some trade rights, then the US could get some action taken. But a complaint against Joe Average Chineseguy? Are you kidding? The first file clerk to receive the complaint would toss it in the waste paper basket without a second thought. Again, just repeating so maybe it will sink in: laws in the US do not apply to people in China.
 
#42
This guy has a whole bunch of BS ads with stolen photos. I reported them all! In one case it was a photo of a Ibanez. I asked how can he say in the ad "the photo shown is the actual photo of the bass" when the photo is the exact one from the Ibanez site! And I told him his photoshop skills suck. Unfortunately you can spend weeks going through BS ads like that on eBay.
 
#44
bongomania said:
Sorry to keep harping on this, because it really doesn't matter to me at all, but you're totally missing the point. Your company in the US threatened to sue a guy in the US. Laws within the US apply to people within the US. Duh! A legal threat has meaning in that context. The Ebayer here is in China. Laws in the US do not apply to people in China. Furthermore, while the Chinese government makes occasional token gestures to crack down on Chinese companies violating international property rights, the vast majority of the time China is the world's largest source of counterfeited goods and copied designs, and it makes such a huge amount of money for the country that they are not inclined to enforce any complaints against these copiers. Additionally, this Ebayer is small potatoes as far as the US and Chinese trade legislators are concerned. Maybe if Sinopec or Baosteel violated some trade rights, then the US could get some action taken. But a complaint against Joe Average Chineseguy? Are you kidding? The first file clerk to receive the complaint would toss it in the waste paper basket without a second thought. Again, just repeating so maybe it will sink in: laws in the US do not apply to people in China.
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Wow - thanks a lot. Forget I ever brought it up. By the way, great professional attitude for a sales rep.
 
#47
MarTONEbass said:
Did you even look at the seller's feedback or other auctions? 51 out of 52 people got guitars they were reasonably happy enough with that they left positive feedback.

I don't think that selling knock-offs is acceptable, and there are Spector, Fodera and Fender knock offs in his other auctions. But to call this auction a scam, and to say the basses don't exist is ridiculous. Ebay doesn't like it when you try to sell 50+ items that don't exist.
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Have you even looked at the OP?

Point is the bass pictured in the auction IS NOT WHAT YOU ARE BUYING. The pictured bass doesn't exist because it's just a photoshop of a bass from Yamaha's site. Who knows what you are buying. All we know is that the bass pictured doesn't exist from this company.
 
#50
For what it's worth... just bought a DVD set of "The Office", seasons 1-5, from China. Was skeptical at first, because the price was so low, but because I used Paypal figured I'd give it a try. Took a month to get here, but it's the same as you'd buy locally so it worked out great. Not the same as buying a bass, though...
 
#52
Once again, I sit here dumfounded while people who call themselves musicians, flippantly talk about theft of copy-written material like it's nothing.

Yeah, stealing from artists is SO cool. :scowl:

And don't whine at bongo for speaking the truth, China doesn't give a poop what the US thinks of copyrights, and eBay doesn't care all that much either.
 
#53
silvertones said:
Must have been worth it to someone,Fender, the SX basses no longer have the Fender looking headstock for sale in the US.That was a legal issue.
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Really? I thought the old SX headstock was significantly different from the Fender shape, and I wasn't aware of trademark infringement proceedings having anything to do with SX changing the design.

Did Fender pressure SX on the headstock design, and is that why it changed?
 
#55
It'd probably be pretty stupid to report it anyway. Just some wanna be luthier trying to make a better living. I feel bad for people who live in China's communism. This is what they resort to to try to make their lives better.
 
#58
busta_bird said:
Uhm, the Chinese bass has 6 knobs while the Yamaha only has 5. It's different.
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If you look at the first post in this thread, there are three pictures. The first (the one on ebay) and the third (the picture from the Yamaha website) are identical apart from the logo on the headstock right down to the grain of the wood. It's the same photo with a bit of editing.
 

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