Troubling Court Ruling: Company Not Allowed To Resell Radar Detectors Online

from the no-first-sale dept

Over the years, we've had plenty of stories about companies trying to limit the ability of resellers to sell their products online, with companies claiming that reselling shampoo or cosmetics on eBay is somehow illegal because of a contract the wholesaler made with its own resellers. Usually these lawsuits don't get very far. Whatever agreement the wholesaler and the reseller had, the eventual seller online usually wasn't a party to those agreements and isn't bound by them -- and (reasonably) the courts recognize that you shouldn't be barred from reselling a product you legally purchased (that whole first sale thing).

However, there are some exceptions, and Eric Goldman points us to the latest one. A reseller of radar detectors has effectively been barred from selling a certain brand on eBay, claiming that it was trademark infringement. But what about those first sale rights? Well, apparently this case gets around them by claiming that the product being resold by this company Midwest Inventory Distribution is a different product, because it doesn't come with the same warranty (Midwest offers its own warranty and the original company, Beltronics, refuses to honor warranties on these resold radar detectors). The court also seemed to have problems with the fact that Midwest didn't properly "disclose" this information, even though every auction stated clearly that Midwest offered its own warranty and Beltronics wouldn't provide any warranty coverage.

As Goldman notes, this seems based on some questionable theories, and conceivably could allow companies to skirt around first sale rules, by claiming that anyone reselling their products online are engaging in trademark infringement, because the "warranties" on the products are different -- even if the products themselves are really identical. As Goldman writes:

The net result then is that eBay buyers willing to pay a discount for an identical radar detector but with only Midwest's warranty instead of Beltronics' won't get that choice. Instead, they get the pleasure of buying at the minimum resale price set by Beltronics.

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Bell Canada Decides To Throttle Traffic Without Telling Resellers

from the no-neutrality-for-you! dept

While it's increasingly rare to find DSL service not directly sold by the telco (thanks to the FCC killing line sharing rules, of course), in other countries, it's much more common. This creates competition on the network and gives the various retail sellers a chance to differentiate themselves. Up in Canada, it appears that Bell Canada has decided to start implementing traffic shaping features without letting its resellers know. That means that customers are discovering that their traffic is being impeded at times and their own ISP has no clue about it. And it's blocking perfectly legitimate activities. In fact, one person points out that he's having trouble downloading the show that the CBC is purposely offering on BitTorrent. This seems especially ridiculous, as Bell Canada is dealing with a small number of resellers and should be able to price its network in a manner that takes into account usage -- allowing the resellers to handle how they reprice and resell the service. But by unilaterally deciding to shape the traffic without even telling its ISP partners, it gets users pissed off at their own ISPs for something that has nothing to do with them. Then again, perhaps that's the idea.

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