eBay Inc., – the renowned multinational e-commerce corporation has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the e-commerce behemoth – Amazon Inc., in the County of Santa Clara, California.
Reports cite, eBay is allegedly claiming that Amazon poached sellers illegally on its marketplace by infiltrating and using the company’s internal e-messaging system. The lawsuit said that over dozens of Amazon’s sales representatives used this method to recruit top eBay sellers into Amazon in the U.S. and abroad.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, eBay claims that it possesses evidence that Amazon used its headquarters as a base of operation from where it coordinated the alleged poaching efforts. Many of the recruitment messages – that violate eBay’s user agreement policies – sent to eBay sellers were similar or sometimes even identical in their wording. The lawsuit also claims that several accounts that were used to send these messages did so using devices that were linked to Amazon’s IP addresses.
eBay reported that it only recently discovered Amazon’s activities when a seller listed on eBay notified the company’s representatives about the messages, after which eBay served Amazon with the cease-and-desist.
A spokeswoman from Amazon Inc., reportedly responded to the current claims by referring to an earlier statement – that Amazon had released after receiving the cease-and-desist letter – stating that the company is conducting a thorough investigation of the accusations levied by eBay.
For the record, both e-commerce companies were established around the same time and have a long history of competing to acquire dominance in the market. eBay – now significantly smaller than Amazon – reported net revenues of about $2.6 billion last quarter compared to Amazon’s $52.9 billion business.
Reportedly, the accuser who brought in the case has requested that the damages be determined through a jury trial.