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"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" Edmund Burke |
| Visit Tabberone's Trademark & Copyright Abusers' Hall Of Shame where we list companies we feel are, or have been, abusing the DMCA and the eBay VeRO Program with their police-state tactics. For a company to get into the Hall Of Shame, it does not have to get sued by us. All it has to do is shut down auctions, etc, in what we feel is a violation of the rights of others, or actively promote false restrictions and/or make false claims concerning trademarks and/or copyrights. |
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You will note that there are a lot of pundits who will tell you what you can and cannot do with patterns, licensed fabrics, embroidered images, pictures, and descriptions, but none can point you to specific court cases or federal law that supports their claims. We can and we do. What we find particularly galling are the people who make claims such as "designers can put restrictions on use if they want" and "I think if it is actually printed on the fabric, you should respect the copyright wishes of the designer" without considering the legal ramifications. Once the item is sold why should someone be able to control what you do with it? The First Sale Doctrine says they can't. But, there are some logical restrictions. You cannot misrepresent the item when you resell it. We started these web pages in 2001 and we have yet to have anyone provide us with court cases or federal law backing their false claims. |
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"The whole point of the first sale doctrine is that once the copyright owner places a copyrighted item in the stream of commerce by
selling it, he has exhausted his exclusive statutory right to control its distribution." Justice Stevens, delivering an opinion for a unanimous Supreme Court in the case QUALITY KING DISTRIBUTORS, INC. v. L'ANZA RESEARCH INT'L, INC. (96-1470), 98 F.3d 1109, reversed. |
| There are a lot of companies out there who use questionable tactics to coerce people into doing what these companies want them to do. While there are far too many people and companies infringing upon copyrights and trademarks, far too many rights holders have adopted approaches that infringe upon the rights of the innocent. If one percent of the people put into jail were proven to be innocent, the public would be outraged and demand some sort of corrective action. One study has concluded that as much as thirty percent of eBay auction terminations are "questionable". Tabberone has been in federal court more than 15 times to defend against "improper" eBay auction terminations and won the great majority of them. |
| Sevenarts and CVFA lose jurisdiction appeal! On January 28, 2008, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Sevenarts and CVFA concerning jurisdiction. For the decision in HTML format, click here,; for the decision in PDF format, click here. Now, they have to fight the issues which they have avoided. The impact of this decision is now the Federal Courts are accepting that a Notice Of Claimed Infringement ("NOCI") establishes jurisdiction for a federal court case in the home district of the recipient of the NOCI, i.e., the VeRO member will have to travel to the home court of the seller to fight the issue if the seller takes the VeRO member to federal court. |
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Come visit our wackiest addition to these pages:
eBay
- Land
This is an open-source board game based upon |
| VeRO Commandments |
| Check out Tabberone's Vero Commandments for those with a need of direction. |
| eBay's Verified Rights Owner ("VeRO") Program was begun to comply with the Digitial Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Originally, eBay actually made some attempt to "verify" that the party was the owner of the "rights". However, eBay has long abandoned that approach while retainng the word "Verified" in the name to give the appearances that eBay really gives a crap about the person having their auction terminated. trust us, eBay doesn't care. After we sued Disney Enterprises in 2002, eBay changed their policy concerning "counter notices" to make it more difficult for you to fight back. These Commandments are the result of our experiences in dealing with eBay and the abuses of the VeRO Program. |
| VeRO On-Line Survey |
| Check out eBay's On-Line Vero Survey. eBay has hired a California company to conduct on-line surveys of selected sellers who have beed VeROed. We consider this survey really biased and tilted towards getting they answers that eBay seeks. eBay can't repair a problem until eBay acknowledges that they are part of that problem. "Offenders" are required by eBay to take and pass what we consider to be a stupidly conceived and badly admisistered "test" that isn't the least bit designed to teach you anything except what the latest eBay under-trained clerk believes is the law. eBay is more concerned in playing CYA (cover their ass) than actually adhering to the law and being fair. |
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Lawsuit Against Shabby Chic Settled!
On October 28, 2003, we filed a lawsuit against Shabby Chic for terminating an auction
of ours on eBay. Click Here to read about
it. On June 23, 2004, Shabby Chic has agreed to a settlement.
"THE PARTIES HAVE SETTLED THE CASE AND THE TERMS OF SETTLEMENT ARE AND MUST BE KEPT CONFIDENTIAL." We are prohibited by the settlement
to say any more.
E! Entertainment Television terminated an auction of Tabberone's on November 17, 2003. We filed a lawsuit on November 21, 2004. E! refused service and demanded they be served personally. They have been. Very petty and childish on their part. Waaaa! Their lawyers wanted us to accept a waiver! We refused. They ultimately conceded. They also have filed a motion to dismiss contending that E! never gave up "ownership" of the DVD dispite US Postal Regulations that explicity state that unsolictied material belomgs to the person receiving it. The Magistrate Judge, Patricia Coan, made a ruling in favor of that motion to dismiss on what we think would be over-turned on appeal but we decided to let it drop. Coan has what what we feel is an "anti pro se bias" that is evident in the federal court system. MGA Entertainment (Bratz) and Dunkin' Donuts were sued by Tabberone for terminating eBay auctions. Dunkin' Donuts reinstated the offending auction and filed a motion to dismiss claiming we sued the wrong company. The court granted that motion to dismiss. However, Dunkin' Donuts withdrew the takedown and isn't interfering with auctions of legitimate items. So we consider it a victory. MGA's lawyers continued to hang in there, fighting tooth and nail, running up MGA's legal expenses, over an applique. MGA must be indifferent to the cost of losing this case. MGA decided to fight this case on technicalities, not on the issues. Why would they do that? because they couldn't win on the real issues. The court ruled in MGA's favor on the technicalities. MGA must have spent $150,000 to get a draw. And, they're no longer shutting down auctions, even those of blatent counterfeiters. Way to go, MGA. Did your law firm, Keats, McFarland & Wilson, ever sucker you into a real rain maker for them. You can't be very bright to spend that kind of money over a "technicality". And. to boot, you are not closing flagrant fakes on eBay. Gun shy? Or stupid? |
| The MicroEnterprise Journal printed an article titled "Fighting Back (and Winning) in Trademark-land" about Tabberone's fight with Major League Baseball Properties. CLICK HERE to read the article. |
| History and Purpose of this Page |
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On August 1, 2001, we had three eBay auctions terminated by Warner Brothers. After some heated exchanges with
Warner Brothers' representatives, Warner Brothers backed of and agreed they had made a mistake. They
unconditionally re-instated our auctions on August 3rd. Since then, we have been the recipient of threats
and/or terminated auctions by M&M/Mars, Precious Moments, Disney Enterprises, Major League Baseball
Properties, Yates Racing, Vittoria North America, Shabby Chic, Wiggles, Bratz (MGA Entertainment),
United Media (Peanuts fabric), E! Entertaimnment Television, Frederick's of Hollywood, Sanrio, and more.
There are a lot of companies who are using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") to interfere with legitimate small businesses. Tabberone is not condoning or promoting trademark infringement or copyright infringement but there are many non-infringing businesses being caught up in the "infringement witch hunt" being conducted by corporate lawyers who should know better. In their aggressive and all encompassing efforts to pretend to protect the trademarks and copyrights of their clients, these unethical corporate thugs in Armani suits are deliberately misstating trademark and copyright law to coerce small home-based businesses into submitting to their demands. How do we know this? Read on. But first, the required legal disclaimer. We are not lawyers. The statements made here concerning legal rights and legal options are opinions and a result of our encounters, in and out of federal court, with lawyers representing corporations who have threatened us over trademark and copyright issues. We strongly suggest you seek competent legal advice before attempting to do what we have done. We did. And we were told we didn't have a chance. So we ignored them. And we won. End of disclaimer. |
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We are not lawyers but we have represented ourselves in federal court against multi-billion dollar companies and won. The content here is not presented as legal advice but as opinion and a result of what we have learned in these battles. | |
| VeRO Commandments |
| Check out Tabberone's new Vero Commandments for those with a need of direction. |
| You can fight them as well! |
| You too can fight back. Representing ourselves, we have backed-off numerous different million-dollar and billion-dollar companies: Warner Brothers, M&M/Mars, Disney Enterprises, Major League Baseball Properties and Precious Moments. Many times we have prevailed in federal court cases. Right now we are involved in federal court in a case with Sevenarts, Ltd and Chalk & Vermilion Fine Arts. |
| The National Football League terminated auctions by Scrungee1 and reinstated them a week later after she emailed them using arguments from this web site. Click here to read about it. |
 Just Shine the Cat Light |
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Copyrighted material. In an effort to provide comprehensive information
concerning a wide array of trademark and copyright topics, we have reproduced
a number of web pages rather than link to them. Sometimes web pages are moved
or removed and then the link is no good and the information is lost. Every reproduced page
has the URL at the bottom showing the source. The reason people post information on their
web sites is for others to read and learn from it. Their intention is for others to have
access to it. By copying it, and referencing the original source, we are assisting them
in their original intention, which is informing the public. We are not trying to claim we
own these pages nor that we authored these pages.
Someone has expressed concern that this copying violates the copyrights of the original owners. We disagree. The Colorado Court of Appeals has strongly affirmed that web sites of this type are "protected speech" and therefore are afforded protection under the First Amendment. We believe our non-commercial and informative use of properly referenced material meets the copyright guidelines for "fair use". |
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Rebuttals. In an effort to provide a balanced view, we make the following
offer to anyone who feels they have been wrongly accused on this web site.
If you, or your company, have been referenced on these pages, and you would like the chance to post a rebuttal, we will post your rebuttal (provided it is in good taste) so others can read it. The rebuttal must be submitted in a format that can easily be converted into HTML. We made this offer a very long time ago and as of July 2007, only AnimieHot.com, in our Hall Of Shame, has chosen to submit a formal rebuttal. |
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Definitions |
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Federal Statutes Copyright Act 17 U.S.C. 5 | Digital Millenium Copyright Act 17 U.S.C. 12 | Lanham Act 15 U.S.C. 22 |
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VeRO (Verified Right's Owner Program) VeRO Commandments | VeRO-Verified Rights Owners Program | Counter Notice Letter Counter Notice (pre-2003) | Counter Notice present | On-Line Survey from 2004 | Articles about VeRO | What To Do If You Are Veroed |
