mary-ron Using Copied Sovereign Images on eBay
eBay seller mary-ron of Derby, United Kingdom, eBay, Auctiva & at least 14 IP infringements.

High eBay Feedback is No Guarantee of Integrity or Honesty
When we wrote this page, this eBay member's feedback was 3609 with 99.7% positive according to eBay.
It also demonstrates that high eBay feedback is no indicator of intelligence, reading ability or honesty.

What's Wrong?
We invest a great deal of time, effort, and cost into creating some of the best photographic coin images on the internet. We strongly object when lazy and dishonest people decide to use them without a by your leave or thanks, doing so in competition with us.
Copyright theft is dishonest. We recommend you avoid doing business with dishonest dealers.
This particular eBay seller not only stole our high quality images of a mint condition 1963 sovereign, she used them in her eBay auctions to try to sell her own sovereign.
It is always possible, even likely, that sellers who steal photographs do not own a similar coin, and have the intention to totally defraud potential buyers.
The vendor is not only cheating us by stealing our copyright images, she is fraudulently or ignorantly misleading and deceiving all potential buyers. Gaining pecuniary advantage by deception is the definition of fraud.

Seller ID	Item Number	Date	Description	Price
mary-ron	230461817279	13th Apr 2010	22 CARAT GOLD FULL SOVEREIGN IN MOUNT QE II 1963	�0.99
mary-ron	230456143690	16th Apr 2010	T.SHIRT BRA BRAND NEW BAGGED N TAGGED WHITE 32C	�0.99

Price
The seller was asking a starting price of �0.99.

A Rare Response
We received a telephone call and e-mail from a Mrs M Aherne, who, although she did not explicitly state it, appears to be maryron.
Did she apologise for stealing our image? No
Did she offer us any compensation? No
Here is a copy of her e-mail:

Dear Mr Chard,
further (sic) to my telephone conversation with a member of your staff this morning, I am writing to you to ask that you remove or at least reword your comments about me so that it contains fatual (sic) statements only.
Allow me to draw your attention to the following libellous statements which I believe you yourself have composed.
The educational standards in the UK appear to be at an all-time low judging by her spelling carat as carrat, and the town she lives in without a capital letter (although this could just be laziness).
If you check my listing for this item which you stole to reproduce on you (sic) website without my permission, you will see that I have no spelling errors nor do I mention the town in which I live
22 CARAT GOLD FULL SOVEREIGN IN MOUNT QE II 1963
Up for auction is this 22 carat gold full sovereign dated 1963.
Bought as a gift many years ago but I have never actually worn it so it is in beautiful condition.
Kept in its box all the time so still bright and shiny :)
Comes with mount which is also hallmarked and supplied in gift box
Selling as never worn and never likely to be worn either!
Item will be sent out special delivery to insure against loss.
Buyer may prefer to collect in person to save on postage but MUST PAY CASH ON COLLECTION AND SIGN A RECEIPT TO CONFIRM TRANSACTION HAS TAKEN PLACE.
Thanks for looking and happy bidding .......
eBay seller mary-ron of Derby, United Kingdom, not only stole our 1963 Gold Sovereign Reverse Photograph but used them without permission to sell her own sovereigns (and half sovereigns).
Even someone with a lower standard of education should know that the word photograph is singular and therefore cannot be used with the word them, as this indicates plural. You are indicating that I have sold sovereigns and half sovereigns, which is untrue - I only sold 1 item.
The following statement is untrue and a complete fabrication on your part which I would like you remove.
This particular eBay seller not only stole our high quality images of a mint condition 1908 sovereign, she used them in his eBay auctions to try to sell her own sovereigns and halves.
Totally untrue as I have never downloaded a photo of a 1908 coin, also she used them in his auction, should be in her auction surely?....yet again your education lets you down Mr Chard.
I have not downloaded a 1908 coin. It seems to me that it is you who are the lazy one, after all, you have a generic response for your naming and shaming articles which you don't even bother to alter to fit the person to whom you are referring.
When I tried to photograph my item, the flash bounced back and obscured the image so I found an image of another 1963 coin in the public domain which I downloaded and used. Your photos should have a restriction placed on them to prevent anyone else from doing this.
I take your accusations very seriously. Your article has been forwarded to my solicitor this morning and following a telephone call from him I have been advised to inform you in writing or by telephone to kindly remove it or reword it within 48 hours so that only the facts remain. I downloaded 1 photograph of the reverse of a 1963 22carat gold sovereign photograph which you chose to display in the public domain.
A copy of this email has also been forwarded to my solicitor
I look forward to hearing from you.
Mrs M Aherne
PS. Thanks to you, Ebay refunded all my fees ( �19 ) even though the listing was removed after the item had sold and the buyer wishes to proceed with the transaction, so in effect you have saved me quite a bit of money, many thanks ;) [email protected]

Corrections
Following her e-mail, we did indeed correct some errors on our page. As Mrs. Aherne astutely realised, we do use templates to create our eBay Copyright Thieves pages, and due to the sheer volume of them, we occasionally miss some of the editing, then do not have time to proof read them.
We note she did not send us the �19 refund from eBay.

eBay Guilty of Negligence or Complicity
We will be reporting this example of copyright abuse using our standard Statutory Declaration via the eBay VeRO programme, and wait to see if they chose to action or ignore our report. We look forward to taking legal action against eBay for their negligence and / or complicity if they fail to take down the offending material promptly.

Auctiva Spreads Contagion
Another complication with this item listing is that the vendor has chosen to use Auctiva. In itself there is nothing wrong with this. Auctiva provides free image hosting, and some other possible benefits to eBay sellers.
The problem arises because it almost (but not quite) always results in our copyright photographs being replicated in the Auctiva Gallery section of the vendors other items, which may or may not be related.
As these other listings infringe our copyright, we believe we are entitled to report these as infringing our IP (Intellectual Property) Rights. In turn, this often leads to eBay's VeRO department replying to say:

Hello,
Thank you for contacting the VeRO Program.
We reviewed the Notice of Claimed Infringement you sent us today and the items you identified.

The Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program is designed to process reports of intellectual property infringement. From the information you have sent us, it doesn't appear that you are reporting an intellectual property infringement.
If you feel that these listings do infringe on your intellectual property rights, please respond to this message and provide us with a more detailed explanation.

Your statement: "From the information you have sent us, it doesn't appear that you are reporting an intellectual property infringement." is hard for us to understand. Why else would we report a copyright infringement.

We believe that your repeated messages querying our reports demonstrates a lack of commitment, education, training, and communication in your VeRO department. Would you please pass a copy of this message to the senior manager of your VeRO department, and your legal department.

Please ensure the offending listings are removed without further delay.

We will repeat that we will bring each and every delay or failure to remove, and do so in good time, to the attention of our legal advisors, and also to a court in support of any and all claims against you.

Please also note that where any of our images appear in the listing sections " Find more items from the same seller.", or in the Auctiva Store section, we believe that the appearance of our high quality photographic images, often of high value goods, enhance the image and reputation of your selling member on every occasion on which they are displayed. Both you and your vendor benefit from this enhancement, and are more likely to sell the item, and at an increased price. Neither you nor your selling member are entitled to this benefit, and we have a right to request you to account to us for any and all revenues earned as a direct, indirect, or partial result of this enhancement, and we do hereby make this request in respect of all listings we have reported in the last 90 days.

eBay Ignorance
eBay routinely ignores our comments.
Sometimes we get further advice (legally incorrect in our opinion) that we should report the actual directly infringing item rather than the indirect ones. We believe their failure to remove the indirectly infringing items leaves eBay itself having opted to be responsible for the continuation of the abuse.

Persistence & Continuation
Another problem with Auctiva users is that, even when we report the direct infringement, nobody tells Auctiva.
The offending image then continues appearing until its previously scheduled end time, meaning that more of the vendors eBay listings continue to infringe our copyright even after the original infringing listing has been reported and removed.
This is another reason we believe eBay are wrong when they tell us to report only the original direct infringement.
eBay probably have no direct responsibility to inform Auctiva, although because it must be a frequent occurrence, and they must surely know about the problem (we have told them on many occasions), we think they should communicate with Auctiva to remedy the general and specific problems.
The eBay vendor never appears to contact Auctiva to ask them to remove the image.
We do not know whether Auctiva provide any facility for their members to exclude or delete certain images.

Auctiva Ignorance & Negligence
We have had some communication with Auctiva to alert them to the problem, even though we do not believe we were under any obligation to do so. Their reply appeared to indicate that it was not their problem, and they did not intend to take any action to prevent it, even though we pointed out that this would help their members.

Sample Listing
22 CARAT GOLD FULL SOVEREIGN IN MOUNT QE II 1963
mary-ron's original directly infringing item.

Copyright Notice
Please see our "Copyright" page for further information.