Velcro Trademark Violation

[plight]

Hi all,

I had a listing for a Ford baseball style hat and apparently the word “velcro” is not allowed.

I received a form letter from eBay saying my item was removed due to trademark violations.
Anyone else have this happen?
Are there any other commonly used words that you can’t say? How would you describe velcro? adjustable?

I did a search for velcro hats just now and came up with 12,000 hats so I’m not sure why I was so lucky to be picked out.
Here’s the email:

After reviewing your eBay account, we’ve taken the following action:
– Listings have been removed. A list of items that were removed can be viewed at the bottom of this message.
– We have credited all associated fees except for the final value fee for your listing(s).

Your listing was reviewed after receiving a report from the rights owner that your listing used their trademark without their permission. We urge you to contact the rights owner directly for more information about why they requested the review of your listing and whether you can relist the item.

For more information on our VeRO program, please visit:
http://pages.ebay.com/vero/infoforusers.html

If you have more questions, contact our policy experts:
http://ocsnext.ebay.com/ocs/cusr?query=1337&=PTB1213

Please be sure your current and future listings follow these guidelines, keeping in mind that additional violations could result in the suspension of your account.

The rights owner or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the rights owner, Velcro Industries B. V., notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law.

We encourage you to contact Velcro Industries B. V. directly if you have any questions.

You can send an email to:
brandprotection@mm-velcro.com

For more information on how eBay protects Intellectual Property, or for additional information if you believe that your listing has been removed as a result of an error or misidentification, please visit the following Help page:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/programs-vero-ov.html
The rights owner has created a VeRO Participant Profile page that contains information to help you understand why removal of your listing was requested. For more information about the rights owner, please go to:
http://vero.ebay.com/vero/velcro

To learn more about rules for sellers, go to:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/seller-rules-overview.html

• This topic was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by plight.

[Clarity]

Relist it and call it hook and loop fastener instead of Velcro.

[WBird]

Yes, it’s happened to me too. I changed all my listings to “hook and loop” like Clarity did.

[SalarySlave]

Yup! Velcro is INFAMOUS for pulling this. They basically want to avoid the term Velcro becoming the common use term for “hook and loop” (which is obviously already is), which, if it legally deemed to be, they would lose their trademark. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark for more info on this.

I never use the term hook and loop in my listings because I’m pretty sure that almost zero buyers would use that search term when looking for a “Velcro” item.

[annabel52]

I had two listings for shoes flagged and they pulled them for the velcro word. They mainly pull listings that have velcro in the title but I left the term in the listing and haven’t had any additional trouble. Cross your fingers. Unless the item specifically says that it used velcro brand you cannot use that term for your item. Funny thing is that most items use a generic brand of hook and loop fastener and not the velcro brand item due to cost!! I just use adjustable in the title if the cap has velcro and then explain in the description. Hook and loop closure takes up too many spaces in a title. Velcro is constantly scouring ebay for violations and there always seems to be thousands more than my 2 or 3 listings with the “bad word”

[jamie]

This just happened to me too. Although the word Velcro was sewn in the tag on hat and was the only reason why I used the word. Guess I’ll just relist without that word.

[SalarySlave]

Velcro is a victim of their own success. In a way I feel “bad” for a company like Velcro that is so successful at marketing their product that they are at risk of becoming ubiquitous usage, but there comes a point where logic and common sense says it’s already happened! Like you’ve said, there are literally thousands of hook and loop listings with velcro in the title on Ebay, Velcro can’t even pull them down fast enough. If that’s not ubiquitous usage, I don’t know what is.

[plight]

I received an answer from the legal dept at Velcro.

Thank you for your e-mail concerning your marketplace auction. It was reported due to your improper use of our VELCRO® trademark. International trademark laws require an owner of a mark to strictly control its use. Please note that our trademark VELCRO® may be used only to identify genuine VELCRO® brand hook and loop fasteners. Furthermore, products that incorporate VELCRO® brand fasteners are not entitled to use the mark to identify the product itself. For example, patches that use VELCRO® brand fasteners are not “VELCRO Patches” – rather they are “patches with VELCRO® brand fasteners.” As we do not have any way of confirming whether the fasteners used in your offered products are genuine VELCRO® brand fasteners, we must request that you remove all use of the VELCRO® mark from your auction listings.

If you do not want your auctions to be removed in the future, please remove the VELCRO® mark from your auction listing, and instead use the functional terms: fasteners, hook and loop fasteners or touch fastener to refer to the type of closure or fastener in your product.

For further information, please visit our About Me Vero page at http://vero.ebay.com/vero/velcro under “Velcro Companies.”

Please note that we do not single out any one auction or seller. We scan marketplaces worldwide on a daily basis for infringing uses of the VELCRO® trademark, and file complaints against those auctions as they come up in our scans. Also note, that as a matter of policy, we will not withdraw complaints against auctions once filed.

Thank you.

Legal Department
Velcro Group Corporation

[ebaymom]

This is very interesting.. thank you all for the heads up. I have some “Velcro” items I will be certain to NOT put this in my title (mainly hats) going forward!

[Author]

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