Shoe retailer Steve Madden has filed a lawsuit against eBay over the alleged sale of counterfeit watches on the auction site.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan Tuesday, claimed eBay has failed to remove counterfeit watches from the site bearing the Steve Madden brand name. The suit accuses eBay of trademark infringement.

eBay’s traffic appears to be on the way down. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise if you pay attention to the commentary on message boards and comment sections on eBay articles.

eBay has announced it will no longer be hosting its annual networking event eBay Live!, and will instead focus on a series of local gatherings.

The company told sellers in a blog post Monday that it would be canceling its planned August 2010 event in Orlando, Florida. Its new plan is to host "more local events that don’t require costly travel" for attendees, said president of eBay Marketplaces Lorrie Norrington.

It seems that Microsoft’s taking three steps forward and one step back, with its hiring of other companies’ employees. It just lost Hugh Williams to eBay.

PayPal has launched a new site called "Do Stuff For Money," which the company describes as a way to get people to do stuff…for money. Mind blowing isn’t it?

Today eBay announced the completion of a tender offer for all outstanding common shares and American Depositary Shares (ADSs) of Gmarket. Back in April, eBay announced that it was spending $1.2 billion to acquire those shares.

Gmarket is known as Korea’s leading eCommerce business, and it will apparently be combined with eBay’s existing online marketplace in Korea, Internet Auction Company.

If there’s one thing that’s sure to turn the heads of bargain-seekers, it’s the word "free," and a new eBay program capitalizes on this fact by waiving some insertion fees.  Unfortunately, there is a catch or two, and the auction company doesn’t seem likely to win over many of its critics with this move.

eBay aims to "spark the entrepreneurial spirit" among its sellers with today’s launch of the eBay Sellers Challenge. The challenge is for sellers to answer the question: "How would you use $25,000 go grow – or start – an eBay business?"

PayPal requires reserves for a percentage of sellers. That percentage is less than 1% according to the company. PayPal likens the reserves to a security deposit to cover future chargebacks and reversals.

Since PayPal began this practice, they have had a lot of questions about it from sellers, and hoping to clear up some confusion, Bill Clark, an analyst with PayPal’s risk team offered the following explanation on the PayPal Blog:

eBay supporters may not love the latest graph released by Hitwise.  Data collected over the course of almost three years indicates that searches for the word "auctions" are losing out in terms of quantity when compared to searches for "classifieds."

eBay, Burlington Coat Factory, and the US Federal Trade Commission are pressuring the US Senate to pass a law banning vertical price-fixing, effectively overturning a 2007 Supreme Court decision.

Manufacturers and retailers actually call it vertical “retail price management” (RPM). The practice entails setting a minimum price retailers can sell specific items for. Remember last Christmas, when you spent hours online comparative shopping only to find out everybody who carried it was selling it for exactly the same price?

eBay is on a legal roll.  A little more than one week ago, a French court ruled that the auction company is not responsible for the sale of counterfeit L’Oreal products through its site.  Today, a UK court came to about the same conclusion. 

On Friday, eBay released a revised version of its user agreement. The changes deal with situations where a buyer has alleged receipt of a counterfeit item.

eBay Senior Counsel Scot Shipman discusses the changes in a company blog post. He says that under the changes:

Back in February, WebProNews posted a couple stories about a competitor to eBay that you may or may not have heard of. It’s called Bonanzle, and it’s been growing remarkably all year.

When we first looked at Bonanzle, we found out that it had been voted the best eBay alternative, and that the site had reached a million listings in six months. In December, the site was quoted as having 170,000 unique visitors.

A French court has ruled in favor of eBay in a case brought cosmetics company L’Oreal over the sale of counterfeit goods on the site.

L’Oreal was suing eBay for $6.97 million (3.5 million euros) claiming the company was not doing enough to prevent the sale of counterfeit goods posted on its auction and sale sites.

eBay recently announced it was returning to its roots as an auction site more focus on the "secondary market". This is probably a wise move as interest and enthusiasm for eBay have both steadily dwindled over the past year or so.

Earlier in the year, eBay announced that it would be making two big announcements per year regarding the eBay Marketplace. Each announcement would be made 60 days in advance of when the changes were scheduled.

 Perhaps if labels make it easier for fans to purchase, they will buy more music; or so the theory goes.  MySpace Music, imeem and Spotify are just a few of the sites adding buy buttons.  Now some new players who each already have millions of website visitors are entering the online music retailing game.