Why hasn't Spyderco registered with eBay's VeRO Program?

A place to list and reference all Spyderco counterfeits, clones, and replicas that are found. Anything that isn't a legitimate Spyderco fits in this area.
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The Deacon
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Why hasn't Spyderco registered with eBay's VeRO Program?

#1

Post by The Deacon »

While reporting fakes here and to eBay gives us a warm fuzzy feeling, eBay cannot do anything unless the owner of the trademark, copyright, or patent that is being infringed has registered with their VeRO (Verified Rights Owner) program and is the party reporting the violation. That's actually reasonable, since eBay can't realistically be expected to know what every company produces, or ever produced and an unscrupulous seller report "your" auctions to increase the chance of someone bidding on theirs. But, when I look through thelist of VeRO participants, Spyderco is not among them.
Paul
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Creepo
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#2

Post by Creepo »

A quick search revealed that the only major American (or European) registered knife company is Benchmade (even if I liked to get more deeper into this subject I won't :D ). Considering out of several knife companies only one is registered, I'm not so surprised Spyderco isn't either.

And as Kristi herself put it the reason this sub-forum exists is the shortage of staff:
TazKristi wrote:As a small company it’s not possible to have someone on staff searching for these things. You are a key part of our awareness. Your efforts are appreciated more than we can express.
I don't know what it takes for a company to register in that program or if it reguires active reporting from the company itself. But I suspect it would probably require someone to actively scan eBay and report the fakes and considering the vast amount of fakes, it would reguire hiring more staff.
And as always Sal and crew try to focus on bringing us great knives for a great price.

Don't get me wrong I'm all for Spyderco registering in the program! Even if it required me to pay 1$ more for each Spyderco product I purchase. ;)
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The Deacon
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#3

Post by The Deacon »

Creepo wrote:A quick search revealed that the only major American (or European) registered knife company is Benchmade (even if I liked to get more deeper into this subject I won't :D ). Considering out of several knife companies only one is registered, I'm not so surprised Spyderco isn't either.

And as Kristi herself put it the reason this sub-forum exists is the shortage of staff:

I don't know what it takes for a company to register in that program or if it reguires active reporting from the company itself. But I suspect it would probably require someone to actively scan eBay and report the fakes and considering the vast amount of fakes, it would reguire hiring more staff.
And as always Sal and crew try to focus on bringing us great knives for a great price.

Don't get me wrong I'm all for Spyderco registering in the program! Even if it required me to pay 1$ more for each Spyderco product I purchase. ;)
Yes, Spyderco would have to be the one reporting the violations. However, if they were registered, Kristi or someone else from Spyderco could monitor our postings here, and act upon them, rather than having to scan eBay themselves. That's my point, we can help, but only so much, and only if they get involved. Would it be 100% effective? probably not. Would it help reduce the number of fakes? maybe. Is it worth their time and effort? Only they can answer that one.
Paul
My Personal Website ---- Beginners Guide to Spyderco Collecting ---- Spydiewiki
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SmoothOne25
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#4

Post by SmoothOne25 »

The Deacon wrote:Yes, Spyderco would have to be the one reporting the violations. However, if they were registered, Kristi or someone else from Spyderco could monitor our postings here, and act upon them, rather than having to scan eBay themselves. That's my point, we can help, but only so much, and only if they get involved. Would it be 100% effective? probably not. Would it help reduce the number of fakes? maybe. Is it worth their time and effort? Only they can answer that one.
this makes sense^ good job paul
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SmoothOne25
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#5

Post by SmoothOne25 »

i use to not even bother till i read here. now im reporting left and right. to no avail imho. it goes down and a dummy sock account pops up with the same stupid "5" the normal most copied five....

ill sue you england!
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Pinetreebbs
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#6

Post by Pinetreebbs »

The Deacon wrote:Yes, Spyderco would have to be the one reporting the violations. However, if they were registered, Kristi or someone else from Spyderco could monitor our postings here, and act upon them, rather than having to scan eBay themselves. That's my point, we can help, but only so much, and only if they get involved. Would it be 100% effective? probably not. Would it help reduce the number of fakes? maybe. Is it worth their time and effort? Only they can answer that one.
I really like your idea. I have two concerns, we may be overfilling the plate of a Spyderco employee and there may be legal ramifications that an attorney should review.
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Bluntrauma
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#7

Post by Bluntrauma »

I would help in anyway I could even if it meant scouring the forums daily. Oh wait, I do that anyway. :cool:
Sometimes you gotta kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.

AKA: Liveitloud on Blade Forums, USN, EDC, Benchmade forums and basically everywhere but here.
liveit_loud on Ebay.
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TazKristi
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#8

Post by TazKristi »

Spyderco is registered with the VeRO program. Two separate registrations in fact. We work very closely with EBay and have had success with having certain auctions removed. However, please keep in mind, there are many things going on behind our doors that we cannot discuss here. Ultimately, having "Bob's" auction taken down is not always in our best interest. Does it cause an issue for "Bob"? Of course, but it may not have any effect on the bigger picture.

Our biggest resource though in this constant battle is you. The links that y'all post here are key to our ability to address this issue. Not just on EBay, but on the internet as a whole. As I said when I started this sub-section, we would never be able to duplicate the number of eyes on this problem in-house compared to all of you. You are highly educated on the topic of Spyderco and byrd. You are interested and motivated and you genuinely care.

So, please keep doing what you're doing. Post links when you find questionable items. It may not seem like it, but I promise, we are looking and we are following up with each and every post.

Spyderco takes great pride in what we do. 33 years of hard work, our commitment to quality high-performance products and always striving to do business in a fair and proper manner is not something we're willing to sit back and watch get diluted or worse.

We sincerely thank you, each of you, for looking out for us. It does not go unnoticed and it is always appreciated.

Kristi
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Pinetreebbs
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#9

Post by Pinetreebbs »

TazKristi wrote:Spyderco is registered with the VeRO program. Two separate registrations in fact. We work very closely with EBay and have had success with having certain auctions removed. However, please keep in mind, there are many things going on behind our doors that we cannot discuss here. Ultimately, having "Bob's" auction taken down is not always in our best interest. Does it cause an issue for "Bob"? Of course, but it may not have any affect on the bigger picture.

Our biggest resource though in this constant battle is you. The links that ya'll post here are key to our ability to address this issue. Not just on EBay, but on the internet as a whole. As I said when I started this sub-section, we would never be able to duplicate the number of eyes on this problem in-house compared to all of you. You are highly educated on the topic of Spyderco and byrd. You are interested and motivated and you genuinely care.

So, please keep doing what you're doing. Post links when you find questionable items. It may not seem like it, but I promise, we are looking and we are following up with each and every post.

Spyderco takes great pride in what we do. 33 years of hard work, our commitment to quality high-performance products and always striving to do business in a fair and proper manner is not something were willing to sit back and watch get diluted or worse.

We sincerely thank you, each of you, for looking out for us. It does not go unnoticed and it is always appreciated.

Kristi

We're on it!
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On Edge
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#10

Post by On Edge »

Smart smart company and business model.

And we get to be part of it, and benefit from the resulting offerings!

Truly unique.

:D

~ Edge
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice ... In practice, there is."
rnbtexas
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#11

Post by rnbtexas »

The more I read about Spyderco and from it's forum members the more impressed I am.
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sal
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#12

Post by sal »

Hi RnbTexas,

Welcome to the Spyderco forum and thanx much for the kind words.

sal
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#13

Post by Ghost »

TazKristi wrote: Our biggest resource though in this constant battle is you.
Proud to say I report all the fakes I spot on the Swedish auction site I frequent :) . Dunno if has any effect though.
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#14

Post by Interzone »

Strange, I'm new to Spyderco and I am new to this forum of course, so I just found this thread, but I just emailed Spyderco about this very subject, I suppose it is up to us as devoted fans of the company to report this nonsense and leave it to the experts; I see some things that are just pathetic, like a spiderweb on a handle and then it is called "Spyderco", but there are some that are more clever, I was almost taken in by this on ebay, I almost bought a Warrior for $60, that right away should have been a red flag, but to the buyer who may be less vigilant,well what can I say, I reported it to Spyderco and ebay, they both said that it would be taken care of, but when the auction was going down, I withdrew and as far as I can tell some poor schmuck ended up buying it, now what if this person then showed it on youtube or some other site all rusted (because it was of course not H1) this could not add to the reputation of these excellent knives
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SpeedHoles
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Re:

#15

Post by SpeedHoles »

TazKristi wrote:Spyderco is registered with the VeRO program. Two separate registrations in fact. We work very closely with EBay and have had success with having certain auctions removed. However, please keep in mind, there are many things going on behind our doors that we cannot discuss here. Ultimately, having "Bob's" auction taken down is not always in our best interest. Does it cause an issue for "Bob"? Of course, but it may not have any affect on the bigger picture.

Hey Kristi, great post and glad I read it. Not going to quote the whole thing, but now regarding the above info, it is unclear to me if in fact Spydercrew and yourself do, or do not, want us to report the fakes on ebay...?


I just posted another response in a different thread about how unsuccessful my past attempts to report a fake on ebay didn't result in any recourse from the seller nor ebay. The auctions I reported carried on and sold. Then more were listed.
Another forum user, hudsonhawk, had replied to that thread and mentioned that his attempts did work to remove the ebay listing.

I just now found the same seller I tried reporting a month ago, and see is still selling fakes presently. As an experiment I filed another report today for copyright and trademark.

Now, If I am overstepping my boundaries as an unaffiliated regular Joe consumer here, please let me know if it is not in the best interest of Spyderco.

But, If it is something you want us to do, shall we form some sort of Spyderco fan task-force to unify and report these fakes (and only fakes of course)?
If this is something we can do, could you advise us on what may work to write in the text box of the report?

I am wondering since my report attempts were fruitless. Yet hudsonhawks worked.

Thanks,
Dave
Going back to Caly.
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TazKristi
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Re: Why hasn't Spyderco registered with eBay's VeRO Program?

#16

Post by TazKristi »

Hi Dave,
Consumers reporting auctions to eBay will have mixed results. There are a lot of factors that go into it. Technically, the owner of the trademarks, copyrights, and or patents will have a lot more weight with the removal of counterfeit products. What we would prefer is that consumers report what they find here with a link to the questionable item. We cannot - and I can't stress this enough - we cannot post follow ups and let people know what we're doing or why. Sometimes we will have an item removed, other times we won't. I promise there is a reason for our decisions and each auction is handled individually. For us, it's so much bigger than one auction. We'll evaluate the item, auction, seller, etc. and make the best decision that will assist everyone (consumers, dealers, distributors, Spyderco) in the fight against counterfeits.

Thanks for asking, but most of all, thank you for your support! We do appreciate each of you!

Kristi
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SpeedHoles
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Re: Why hasn't Spyderco registered with eBay's VeRO Program?

#17

Post by SpeedHoles »

TazKristi wrote:Hi Dave,
Consumers reporting auctions to eBay will have mixed results. There are a lot of factors that go into it. Technically, the owner of the trademarks, copyrights, and or patents will have a lot more weight with the removal of counterfeit products. What we would prefer is that consumers report what they find here with a link to the questionable item. We cannot - and I can't stress this enough - we cannot post follow ups and let people know what we're doing or why. Sometimes we will have an item removed, other times we won't. I promise there is a reason for our decisions and each auction is handled individually. For us, it's so much bigger than one auction. We'll evaluate the item, auction, seller, etc. and make the best decision that will assist everyone (consumers, dealers, distributors, Spyderco) in the fight against counterfeits.

Thanks for asking, but most of all, thank you for your support! We do appreciate each of you!

Kristi


Kristi,
Thanks for the reply.
I'll continue to keep my eye out. The ebay seller I had in mind, and had attempted to report, was already mentioned here in a different thread, so you must be aware they still have current auctions for counterfeits.

Best of luck with this battle!
Going back to Caly.
jerryh
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Re: Why hasn't Spyderco registered with eBay's VeRO Program?

#18

Post by jerryh »

How does one spot a fake? I try to stay informed, I try to keep the old adage in mind - 'if it sound too good to be true, it probably is' -- even with that being said, the 'consumer is likely' to be taken advantage of sooner or later if the copyright holder can't stop the many clones which seem to be out there.

Regards, Jerry
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Re: Why hasn't Spyderco registered with eBay's VeRO Program?

#19

Post by toomzz »

jerryh wrote:How does one spot a fake? I try to stay informed, I try to keep the old adage in mind - 'if it sound too good to be true, it probably is' -- even with that being said, the 'consumer is likely' to be taken advantage of sooner or later if the copyright holder can't stop the many clones which seem to be out there.

Regards, Jerry
j

Hi Jerry, google on words like 'fake military' or 'chinese copy spyderco endura' and then on images. They will take you to websites where the differences are explained between genuine models and fake ones. You can also find this on youtube, there are many short 'tutorials' on fake spyderco knives.

Cheers,
Tom
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Re: Why hasn't Spyderco registered with eBay's VeRO Program?

#20

Post by loremipsum »

So... with the new lawsuit, it turns out it's eBay that's not doing the right thing.
dolor sit amet
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