October 11, 1999, San Bruno, California - AuctionWatch.com today characterized a formal warning from eBay to cease searching the eBay Web site as anti-consumer and in direct conflict with the Internet industry as a whole. AuctionWatch.com reiterated its plans to continue offering its popular Universal Search function.

Universal Search is an indexing service that enables consumers to find items available for auction across over 300 of the leading sites such as eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo from one central location, www.auctionwatch.com. There is no charge to use this service and AuctionWatch.com does not collect any commission from buyers or sellers.

“We view our role as the independent voice of the auction industry,” said Rodrigo Sales, co-founder and CEO of AuctionWatch.com. “Consumers come to our site to learn about the auction industry as a whole and use some of the tools we have developed to facilitate the auction process. Our Universal Search feature is an important service for the auction community in that it provides sellers with greater exposure for their listings and it provides buyers with greater choice and convenience.”

The Universal Search function has only been available in beta form for the last two-weeks and has already generated over 150,000 click-throughs to sellers’ items on the various auction sites. “We are very pleased with the consumer response so far and we believe it underscores the need for this type of service,” said Sales.

In a letter on Friday, eBay demanded that AuctionWatch.com stop searching its site and warned that eBay is prepared to take appropriate steps to prevent AuctionWatch.com from accessing the eBay site. The correspondence states eBay’s contention that the Universal Search feature is an “unauthorized intrusion” and that it places an unnecessary load on their servers, is a violation of their intellectual property rights, and misleads users by not returning the full results of some eBay searches.

In response, Sales stated, “We believe that eBay’s claims are baseless and that AuctionWatch.com is in compliance with all applicable laws. AuctionWatch.com is following the precedent set by search engines, which make it easier for users to find what they are looking for by bringing all the information to one place.”

Regarding the specific claims made by eBay, Sales said, “Our unique search mechanism only places a query to the eBay site for the category of items specified by the user and therefore, represents a fraction of a percent of the load eBay users themselves place on the system. We dispute eBay’s claim of copyright infringement as the terms of their own user agreement states that the item listings are the property of the sellers who post them and such information is not copyrightable in any event. As for eBay’s contention that we only return partial listings, currently we prioritize our search to return only those auctions that are due to close in the next few days because that is the focus of our user-base. By designing the search this way, we maximize the speed in which it takes place and minimizes the load on the servers of the auction sites. However, as we are constantly adding new capabilities to our product, which is still in a pre-release phase, we would be happy to work with eBay to make our results more extensive if that would resolve their problems with our service.”

AuctionWatch.com had been in negotiations with eBay to address their concerns with the Universal Search feature but were unable to reach agreement. In acknowledging the breakdown in talks, Sales said, “eBay simply would not accept any option that displayed their results next to those of its competitors. Also, they wanted us to sign a licensing agreement for information that we believe is in the public domain. Our perspective is that they are trying to flex their muscles as the 800–pound gorilla of the auction industry and bully smaller companies, like AuctionWatch.com, into denying consumers the choice of services.”

According to the results of a Vendio user survey of more than 1,000 buyers and sellers that have used the Universal Search feature, over 95% of them like the service. Not surprisingly, over 97% of buyers felt it was a more convenient way to search the various auction sites and over 98% of sellers liked the service because it gave their listings greater exposure. Additionally, 96% of the respondents felt that eBay had no right to ban search engines from indexing the auctions on their site.

In commenting on the potential outcome of this dispute, Sales said, “We are hopeful that eBay will respond to the wishes of the auction user community and change its policy to allow search engines to index the auction information on its site. This will give eBay sellers greater exposure for their items and, we believe, help grow the auction industry. Regardless, the Universal Search feature is overwhelmingly supported by our user-base and we will explore every option to continue to offer the service.”

About AuctionWatch.com
AuctionWatch.com is the premier independent and comprehensive online auction services company whose mission is to inform and empower participants in the auctioning process. The company’s online destination aggregates information, posts daily content, and provides value-added services to new and experienced buyers and sellers. Based in San Bruno, California, AuctionWatch.com is privately held and funded by Sequoia Capital, @Ventures, Argus Capital, Angel Investors LP, and private investors.

Contacts:

Kamini Ramani, AuctionWatch.com
kamini@auctionwatch.com
650/808-5814

Suzanne Day
Spark Public Relations
suzanne@sparkpr.com
650/330-0330 ext. 227

About AuctionWatch.com
AuctionWatch.com is an Internet services company whose mission is to empower participants in the auctioning process by building the only independent and comprehensive resource for online auctions. The company's online destination aggregates information, posts daily content, and provides value-added services to new and experienced buyers and sellers in the auction process. Based in San Bruno, California, AuctionWatch.com is privately held and funded by Sequoia Capital, @Ventures, Argus Capital, Angel Investors LP, Stanford University and private investors.