“A home-based seller of handmade crafts has won a trademark lawsuit by default against an artwork licensing giant,” reports AuctionBytes:

Jennifer Heist makes handmade collectible fabric crafts, such as checkbook covers, photo holders and bookmarks, and sells them online and at craft shows. She runs the business out of her home under the name of Check Me Out. Heist has sold over 9,000 items on eBay since 2000.

In March, she filed a complaint against Laurel Burch Artworks Inc. after the company allegedly asked eBay to take down one of Heist’s listings because it violated the eBay Trademark Violation - Unauthorized Item policy. The request had been made through eBay’s VeRO program set up for handling such matters.

Heist sought a declaratory judgement that she had not infringed on Laurel Burch Artworks’ copyright and trademark rights. She asked for damages for intentional interference with a contractual relationship (between herself and eBay); tortious interference with a prospective business relation (between herself and the eBay bidder); product disparagement; and a federal law claim for a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Heist represented herself and did some of her legal research on the Tabberone website belonging to Karen Dudnikov, who is also an online seller and has waged successful battles against owners of intellectual property.

The defendant, rather inexplicably, defaulted.

Or is defaulting better than being spanked on the merits?

This is certainly an interesting angle on eBay and VeRO takedowns. For years LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® has been kvetching — and before blogging came and consumed life itself, it was just little us (have we mentioned that lately?) — about eBay’s arrogant approach to protecting IP rights, simply summarized as, “We’re making too much money to care.”

It only stood to reason that, notwithstanding its unwillingness to work with luxury goods manufacturers, which are getting slaughtered on eBay, its attitude toward the Little People whence come its revenues would align it more with high-handed, over-broad IP rights “sweeps” by all kinds of other outfits. This time a Little Person won.

Wonder why she didn’t sue eBay, too?

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