eBay continues suit against Amazon for illegal seller-poaching

The battle between eBay and Amazon continues. In its latest move, eBay is suing employees at Amazon for illegally poaching the former’s sellers. Its current lawsuit alleges that the Amazon employees “knowingly” targeted eBay to reap off profits for the company and for self.In an article by WSJ, the suit is against three Amazon managers who were involved in coordinating the scheme and “violating” eBay’s user agreement and policies. In a statement to CNN, an eBay spokesperson said Amazon’s illegal scheme to target eBay sellers were more coordinated, systemic and pervasive than previously claimed.This comes after eBay’s initial lawsuit in October 2018 on claims that Amazon had “perpetrated a scheme to infiltrate and exploit eBay’s internal member email system (M2M)” to recruit its sellers to Amazon. According to the court document seen by Marketing at that time, since 2015, “dozens of” US and overseas sales representatives from Amazon created eBay member accounts to access its M2M email system and used it to seek “hundreds of” eBay sellers to sell on its platform.“There are laws to protect against anti-competitive and illegal tactics, and we have every intention of holding the company and specific ringleaders accountable,” the statement read. Marketing has reached out to eBay and Amazon for comment.The issue was brought to light when an eBay seller informed the company after being approached by an Amazon representative. EBay notified Amazon of the issues by letter, requested it to cease and desist from such activity and to which, Amazon failed to confirm that it would cease and desist without providing any requested information.