Recently my son became very interested in dye sublimation, he hasn't sold anything he's made, mainly because it's not good enough, i supported him in this as it was something he likes doing. My son has learning difficulties and finds life very hard, the slightest thing can upset him, so as you can imagine dye sublimation probably isn't the best option,but it kept him happy. I should mention he has always collected mugs and magnets since he was about 8 years old when someone gave him a huge box of mugs and magnets ranging from chocolate bars to bands to TV programs. Just before Christmas we visited a carboot fair and he bought some magnets and mugs, the mugs are what i am going to talk about. Without telling you exactly whats on the mug because it's an on going thing but thought i'd mention this on the forum.My son decided in January to sell some of his less liked collection on ebay including some we bought on the car boot sale, about 15 mugs in total. sales were slow, who wants used mugs?? 6 sold second time we listed them though and he was quite happy he got a few quid each for them. Ebay removed three mugs, one was fair enough as there was no copyright on it, the other two I argued on my sons behalf that these other two mugs were real and had the copyright on the side and in the end they relented and we was able to list. here's where it gets bad, a few weeks after ebay removed the third mug that stayed removed we had a letter and an email from a soliciter in Manchester saying they was suing us for breach of copyright and passing off, if you don't know what passing off is then i suggest you look it up especially if your on ebay selling or producing mugs that have a design thats not yours. Here's the interesting part, we have only been members of ebay for about a year, we have sold about 50 items in the past, mostly household stuff, battery chargers, laptop mouse, foot spa, you know the kind of thing. Anyway the letter was official and worried me to the extreme that i immediately contacted a solicitor, costs alone would be £2000. A solicitor told me we was in serious trouble and that an out of court settlement he would aim to be done. this is ongoing and the issue has still not been sorted. the crux of the matter is that my solicitor thinks we may have a case because i have managed to obtain photo's of the boot seller with more items for sale, same design, also we hadn't sold the item,merely listed it for sale. We are not business sellers (something that has probably saved us more than anything), they tried to say we produced this item. clearly we haven't and by producing photo's of the seller we are probably in the clear. Here's an interesting part though, on ebay we have another account in the name of another family member, about 4 months ago we purchased some sub paper and a printer for my son to try and do his own stuff (as i said before we haven't had much success) however Ebay have given this company details of this other account. Nothing for us to worry about a we wasn't making mugs to sell, but they have tried to make it look like we have. However because we have only sold 6 mugs on ebay the whole time we are fine. it got me thinking though there must be hundreds of people making mugs and other items for sale on ebay with images that are copyrighted. was we merely unlucky to be selected or have we been targetted, who knows, what i do know is the thought of being taken to court and being humiliated has nearly split my family apart. we are not a well off family, far from it. The soliciter doing the suing has said he expects damages and costs and this could run into thousands. My soliciter has said other wise. 1) we didn't sell the item, 2) we have proof where the item was purchased, 3) we are not producing this item.
thought i'd post here, i mean lets face it could you run the risk or being caught in similar circumstances!!