Reply on open letter sent by me on

----- Original Message -----
From: "On behalf of Bill Cobb" (billcobb@ebay.com)
To: "Lee Berkovits" (lee@leesantiques.com)
Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2006 11:17 AM
Subject: Re: An open letter to eBay (KMM48806312V64408L0KM)

Hello Lee,

Thank you for contacting Bill. My name is Marley and he has asked that I respond and address some of your concerns. Particularly your concerns about fake or counterfeit items listed on eBay.

I would like to assure you that eBay is also very concerned with the listing of counterfeit and replica items on the site. We take these matters seriously and we are always working with our buyers, sellers and members of independent third party organizations to address this issue. Additionally, we are currently working with many of our Chinese sellers in an effort to educate them on our policies.

Please remember that, although we are commonly referred to as an online auction web site, we are not a traditional auction house. Instead, our site acts as a venue to allow anyone to offer, sell, and buy just about anything, at anytime, from anywhere, in a variety of formats, including a fixed price format and an auction-style format commonly referred to as an "online auction."

eBay is not involved in the actual transaction between Buyers and Sellers. As a result, we have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of Sellers to sell items or the ability of Buyers to buy items. We cannot ensure that a buyer or seller will actually complete a transaction.

No one person at eBay is an expert on the rights of any third party. Therefore, eBay developed our VeRO (Verified Rights Owner) program to allow rights owners to search and identify those listing that violate there rights. Listings are then removed at the rights owners request.

I encourage you to assist us in our efforts and report any items that you believe are counterfeit via the web form below:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_inline/index.html

eBay removes thousands of listings every day that we determine are in violation of our policies. Without the assistance of members like yourself, who use this tool, we would not be able to locate as many of these listings as we currently do.

If you would like more information on eBay's Replica & Counterfeit Items policy, please see the following link:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/replica-counterfeit.html

Thank you again for your email.

Sincerely,

Marley on behalf of Bill Cobb
President
eBay North America