Tabberone's Hall of Shame-Fleurville.

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Fleurville
Hall Of Shame Members
Page Added March 22, 2004

Last Updated - December 25, 2009

Some background information first. Fleurville is located at 24A Tiburon St., San Rafael, CA 94901. Catherine Granville is the holier than thou president of the company.

Fleurville manufactures high-end baby diaper bags. These bags regularly sell through dealers and are supposedly of such high quality that Catherine Granville has an attitude problem. They don't want their bags sold on eBay. That would be so very demeaning.

That is what caused the problem. Re-selling a genuine Fleurville bag on eBay is not trademark infringement. Fleurville was shutting down auctions for simply selling their bags.

Enter Tabberone who, on February 16, 2004, listed three of these Fluerville diaper bags on ebay.

On February 18, 2004, eBay ended these three auctions at the demand of Fleurville and Catherine Granville, the holier than thou president of the company. The first email to Fleurville got an automated response saying Catherine Granville was not available:

"I will be out of town starting Feb. 13 and will be back in the office Feb. 23. If you need to place an order, please email charlene@fleurville.com, and if you need to check on the status of an order, please email david@fleurville.com."

Tabberone again emailed Fleurville with the same question. David Reiss replied to this one saying we may not use their name to sell their product.

"The Fleurville brand and name is copyrighted and Protected by law and by ebay copyright standards. So the name Fleurville may not be used along with Any pictures or descriptions that identify it as such"

Actually David, the Fleurville name is not copyrighted; it is a trademark. But we seriously doubt if you, or Catherine Granville, have the intelligence to comprehend the difference. eBay does not have any copyright "standards"; all eBay is doing is trying to avoid lawsuits by terminating any and every auction reported to them. Federal law allows the name of the product and pictures of the product to be used when selling the product. David, please use more sun block when you hit the beach.
A few days later, Catherine Granville finally responded saying they don't allow their products to be sold on eBay.

"We have spent a great deal of money to trademark our brand and product names, and currently we do not authorize any of our wholesale accounts to sell our products on ebay."

Catherine, we do not give a rat's ass what you "authorize" because you lack the legal authority to make such decisions. She then sent another email which stated:

"Legally, you cannot advertise and sell our trademarked products without our permission. We have not given anyone permission to sell our products on ebay so you are selling them without our permission."

Which is not true by any stretch of her tiny imagination. So we decided that a federal court would be the best place for this conflict to be resolved. So, "What did we do?", you ask? Silly you. We filed a lawsuit on February 27, 2004, Civil Action No. 04-D-0348, in Denver.
On March 8, 2004, Catherine Granville called to discuss the situation. After the conversation, in which she was on the verge of tears, we emailed her with a proposed settlement and a warning she should have her lawyer contact us. On March 24, 2004, we filed a motion to dismiss the complain. CLICK HERE to read the settlement agreement.
We had an understanding with Fleurville's lawyer that Fleurville would reinstate previously terminated auctions upon petition to Fleurville. Fleurville ignored the understanding and continued to improperly interfere with eBay auctions. Their lawyer felt that "they (Fleurville) now understood their position was untenable".
Fleurville is reinstating sellers ONLY AFTER the sellers have to threaten to go to court against them like we did. SHAME ON YOU, FLEURVILLE. Catherine Granville, now we wish we had not settled. We consider you nothing more than a lying bitch.

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