[council] Legal Decision wrt Auctions

[Thomas Keller]

the article reports about a ruling of the OLG Oldenburg .a german court,
in respect to a person trying to sell a car at ebay but withdrawing
the offer after several bits had already been placed. The court agreed
with the argumentation of the complainant that due to the offer
of the defendant at ebay and the valid bit of the complainant a contract 
between this to parties had been established. The case was resolved by
ordering the defendant to pay damages of 2.499,50 � to the complainant.

Basicly this ruling means that if you start to sell something on ebay
you have to accept the highest offer you get and go with it.

I'm as you all know no lawyer and I hope that I haven't missunderstood
the importance of this ruling but to my limited understanding I would 
not think that this has any relevance for future TLD auctions. But
maybe Niclas should have a look at this as well.

Best,

tom

Am 11.08.2005 schrieb Michael D. Palage:
> Hello All:
> 
> I came across the following article today in one of my legal periodicals
> that I thought might be worth sharing. I believe it may potentially be
> relevant if ICANN should ever go down the path of auctioning off TLDs.
> Although the summary of the article from BNA is free, one needs to have
> a subscription for the translation of the decision into English,
> however, the German version if FREE.
> 
> GERMAN CT. RULES NET AUCTION POSTING AN IRREVOCABLE OFFER
> BNA's Electronic Commerce & Law Report reports that a German court has
> ruled that placing an article for sale on eBay constitutes a binding and
> irrevocable offer to sell. Even if a seller terminates the auction
> before the specified time period ends, the binding offer stands. It does
> not matter if the seller complied with eBay's termination procedures.
> Article at <http://pubs.bna.com/ip/BNA/eip.nsf/is/a0b1e8v3y6>
> For a free trial to the source of this story, visit
> http://www.bna.com/prodcuts/ip/eplr.htm
> German language decision at
> <http://cogworms.notlong.com/>
> 
> Thomas perhaps you might be able to translate and share any relevant
> portions of the text with the council.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Michael D. Palage
> 
> 
> 

Gruss,

tom

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