please help, I am being sued on ebay

Hi, im hoping some one here can give me some advice. I made a stupid mistake of copying other sellers on ebay and selling some ebooks. Now I got an email from a publisher saying he will be talking to his lawyers about this. I then immediately removed all my listings. Im so terrified of this situation and I only sold a small amount. what should i do? How does it work because I sold on the US ebay site but I live in Canada? any help would be appreciated!!

Most likely they are just trying to scare you so you will remove your listings if you only sold a small amount. It wouldn't be worth the time or effort if you are just a small time seller.

Someone else may come along in a minute who knows more, I'm not from the US so I can't say about the laws there.

Just tell them your ebay account was hacked and you had no idea someone was using it. Give him all the money you made from that product and that should reassure them that this was indeed a hack!

worked for me

and remember don't do it again

-Sasha

Relax for starters; you are not being sued.

Someone is talking to their lawyer. No big deal at this point.

You may be worth suing, the case may have no merit, the publicity might hurt the actual publisher and a number of other things could get in the way of an actual lawsuit.

Stop doing what you are doing if it is a violation and could get you served papers for starters.

Then see what happens.

I bet nothing.

Thank you for all the responses so far, i have removed all my listings and do not plan on ever listing this stuff again. It is so intimidating, so you guys think it wouldnt be worth their time and money?

ignore.. go to sleep... u have already removed.. and i am pretty sure.. just msg them that u did not knew u cudnt resell that ebook someone else sold it to u claiming as their own with resale rights...
and that u have now removed it from ur listings
and than sleep well and start with some other products

jgirl said:

I got an email from a publisher saying he will be talking to his lawyers about this.

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There is about ZERO chance of you actually being sued unless you were making thousands of sales on eBay of this eBook. An Email means absolutely nothing legally. If they were really worried about you, they would send you a cease and desist letter.

sashablack said:

Give him all the money you made from that product and that should reassure them that this was indeed a hack!

-Sasha

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If you give them the money, you're basically admitting that you weren't hacked.

Most likely a warning, nothing too much of a big deal. Just take it as it is and don't do it again.

jgirl said:

Now I got an email from a publisher saying he will be talking to his lawyers about this. I then immediately removed all my listings.

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I suspect this was the outcome he wanted.

Now that he has achieved his aim I suspect he will have no need to litigate and will be glad he doesn't have to put his time or money into taking any further action.

Could be a competitor trying to scare you?

Nothing will happen most likely.But DO NOT reply to his email!Just delete the listing and move along

thank you all for your responses. I did google the guy and everything seems legit so its not a competitor. Does me living in canada change anything?

jgirl said:

thank you all for your responses. I did google the guy and everything seems legit so its not a competitor. Does me living in canada change anything?

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It would cost more money to sue you if the publisher is in us. Remember, it costs money to sue you. If you sold ten books, and cost them $100 in revenue, they're not going to spend $12K suing you.

jgirl said:

thank you all for your responses. I did google the guy and everything seems legit so its not a competitor. Does me living in canada change anything?

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Doesn't change too much, the items/ebooks are protected by laws in any case, so don't go doing it again.

I would suspect that they already succeeded in their goals, as you have taken down your listings. I wouldn't sue you if I was the lawyer, since you complied and took down the listings and there is no further point in pursuing the case. Just don't do it again.

Yeah, I agree with toml3030 - if you send them any money then that would basically be an admission of guilt. This probably won't go anywhere further because it's most likely not worth anyone's time to actually sue you, but in the event it did... you don't want any acknowledgement of liability.

At this point they've notified you of a copyright infringement, and you responded by removing the infringement. If it did proceed further then your best defense as innocent_kid mentioned is to claim you believed you had resale rights. As soon as you found out otherwise you ceased reselling it. Don't do anything to try proving you were justified in believing that, just claim that you come across ebooks with resell rights all the time and apparently made a mistake this time and leave it at that.

I also would suggest not claiming you're account was hacked, because that is something that could be proven false. That would amount to an attempted coverup in which case you could be in even more trouble. You've probably heard about the story from a few years ago when Shepard Fairey entered an art contest and his submission was selected by the Obama campaign. In creating the "Hope" poster Fairey had used a reference photo from the Ass. Press which he gave no acknowledgment for and it turned out didn't have the rights to use. There was a big lawsuit over it and Fairey broke a few more laws trying to cover his ass. He ended up with huge fines and was sentenced to probation for his attempted cover-up.

All that has happened so far is that you received that email. You're response was to remove the listing and stop reselling the ebook. That is the extent of what you should do at this time. If you respond to the email, I would not say anything more than "we received your complaint and have removed that ebook from our listings, thank you for the notification". If it did proceed to a lawsuit then any emails could be used in the case, so it's best to say as little as possible. Don't make any further responses and save any emails they send to you in case it ever did proceed further.

As long as you have stopped selling their ebook, it is unlikely they will do anything more. In fact, unless it is a large company they probably were just blowing smoke when they threatened to talk to their lawyer. Copyright lawsuits can be very expensive.

You've done everything you can, so just move on and forget about it.

Nothing will happen just remove listings and that's it

I know how you feel, I've been in the same situation a few months ago. The guy said his father was FBI and he took screenshots of my ad, that I was already in their files, I was gonna have a criminal file, all this kind of BS. I just removed my ad, never heard of them again.

Just don't do anything and stay put. Anyways before being sued for copyright purposes, you always get a Cease-And-Desist warrant. If you stopped your activity before receiving the warrant, you are good. And don't take it personnaly, but you are most probably not worth spending thousands for a lawsuit

Still can sell digital shit on egay ?

Yeah, if this happens again, always consider the dollar amount you gained vs the potential legal costs. Even if this was a few thousand dollars, they're not going to shell out a bunch in legal fees to end up with a net negative.