Trademark & counterfeit Issue, Please Help

Hi Guys, i'm a new seller on ebay, I been selling really nice shoes for woman as dropshipper.

Today ebay has deleted some of my item and blocked me from adding new products for a week saying these items are fake etc, and they asked me to contact the person who put the complain in, so i emailed them to ask how they are fake because i buy from a big company in china and that was their respone:

"""" Please note that **** owns several trademark registrations throughout the world, including Australia, protecting in particular its brand name "****" and its red sole signature.

We at **** are responsible for the enforcement of **** brands on auction websites. Consequently, we are empowered to request removal of any offer for sale of shoes infringing on **** trademarks.

In the course of our surveillance program, it came to our attention that some of your products were in fact red soled shoes.

Our clients' trademark rights enable them to prevent others from using any infringing sole. This is why we reported your listings to eBay and requested for their immediate removal.

We believe that you now better understand why your auction listing was removed on the basis of trademark rights violation. """""



Ok so this is their email, i couldn't totally understand, but are they saying i cant sell these because the heels are red soled?? can people actually have a trademark on what colour the soles are? it's really not getting into my head. or they are saying the shoes are fake? i dont get it.

some help here would be highly appreciated.

OK, I'm a little confused by this myself lol. It has to be brand name related, surely, it can't just be the fact that the shoes you were selling had red soles .... that's just a little too bizarre.

The fact that you were sourcing from China speaks volume to the fact that they were fake, so I would say that it is the brand name of the shoe where you have fallen foul with the trademark owner, not the colour of the sale.

Of course if you are in any doubt at all, you could write back to them and ask for clarification as to what the trademark actually covers. They seem to have good open communication, so would expect they would clarify what the issue is exactly, but my money is on the brand name being non-genuine.

I know its a funny situation because i know for fact that these chinese company didnt copy the name as they use generic names however they could have possibly copied the design a bit, but the design is also not so sophisticated i'm sure many companies have done the same ones,
after googling about that company and done my research i found out that it is the red SOLES... that's just way too funny. That company basically has the trademark of red soles and only that company can create red soles, however if the colour is just a bit off red it should be fine.. funny world if you ask me

Well I have to admit, I find that truly bizarre lol, but I guess it's not so much the colour red that has the trade mark, more the red design itself on the shoe sole.

Opens an interesting door, perhaps you should look into getting a different colour lol, hot pink, magenta, electric blue. Surely they can't have a trade mark on just having the colour on the shoe sole, that's crazy. If you can trade mark the colour of the sole of a shoe, what's stopping someone from trade marking the shoe colour itself?

Wow, what a can of worms!

No one knows shoes better than women! lol ;)

It may seem funny or utterly bizarre but seriously the red soles are trademarked by Christian Louboutin. When he introduced his signature red sole in 1992 and registered the red-lacquered outsole as a trademark in 2008.

There's even a recent lawsuit filed by Christian Louboutin against Yves St. Laurent

Cheers!

Well I have to admit, I find that truly bizarre lol, but I guess it's not so much the colour red that has the trade mark, more the red design itself on the shoe sole.

Opens an interesting door, perhaps you should look into getting a different colour lol, hot pink, magenta, electric blue. Surely they can't have a trade mark on just having the colour on the shoe sole, that's crazy. If you can trade mark the colour of the sole of a shoe, what's stopping someone from trade marking the shoe colour itself?

Wow, what a can of worms!

Welcome to SaleHoo ginamarycolombo :)

Please feel free to sing out if you need help with anything.

Cheers!