Legal and Ethical Environment of Business

Abstract

“In eBay Inc. v. Bidder's Edge Inc., 99-21200, California Northern District Court Judge Ronald Whyte ruled that eBay was likely to prevail on the trespassing claim, and granted the preliminary injunction. In its opinion, the court found that eBay's servers were private property. EBay intended to give conditional and limited public access to those servers, and eBay did not intend that the public use its servers in the way contemplated by Bidder's Edge. The court noted that in eBay's use agreement; it specifically prohibited the type of automated access used by Bidder's Edge. Further, the court ruled that irreparable harm could occur should a number of companies engage in this automated access process.” LEAD STORY-DATELINE: The Recorder, 5/26/00.

Dear, Ashley

Hi, how are you doing? I’ve noticed that you have a few questions about the article that I sent you, I will do my best to help you understand the case eBay vs. Bidders edge (“BE”) so that you will be able to design your internet dating website without any concerns of a complicated law suit. First a little bit about the web sites; eBay is an internet- based, person to person trading site, “eBay offers sellers the ability to list items for le and prospective buyers the ability to search those listings and bid on items.”(http://pub.bna/lw/21200.htm) and in order to search other auction websites you must exit eBay. Bidder’s edge is a website that uses an automatic process to search various auction sites including eBay for items to post for consumers use, and with this the customers can compare prices from all sorts of auction sites on bidder’s edge.

1. What did bidders edge do that was different then eBay’s normal customers? Why does it matter to eBay? Bidders edge copied millions of auction listings from eBay's database without their permission and it matters to eBay because with the way that (BE) is extracting this information it could potentially harm eBay's system such as reduced...