I contacted eBay shortly after my listing was pulled, and used their chat window link to talk to an eBay representative about my listing being pulled.
They confirmed that Verdes Innovations S.A. were the ones to file the complaint to eBay. I was unable to get any of my further questions answered, because they were inquiring to things that violated other peoples privacy. Most of my questions were answered with "you will need to contact Verdes Innovations for that answer".
eBay is obligated to follow thru on any sort of claim like Verdes made. It's set up like that to protect eBay from mistakes. Makes sense. I was warned by eBay that re-listing the cubes before getting a release of the claim from Verdes could result in my account being banned.
An interesting point I'd like to make on the eBay listing being removed, is that I have done that to someone before, and was very easy to do.
I DJ, and ordered a bag from a seller that was selling the newest Native Instruments bag for some midi controllers I bought that had just come out like a week before. I get the bag in, and am immediately pretty let down. It was horrible quality, and not what I had expected after hearing all the hype of how good they were supposed to be.
After doing more research on what the bag was supposed to look like, it became clear that the person I bought it from was silk-screening Native Instruments' name on bags, and selling them as knock offs.
My process was this:
I contacted Native Instruments, and told them of the suspected KO. I contacted eBay, and opened a dispute because the bag I received was a suspected KO. Within 2 hours the auction the seller had was removed. Shortly after it was removed, the seller was banned.
That was from me simply sending one message to eBay, and informing Native Instruments of the issue.
My point being, I can objectively see this from both perspectives, and I also know how simple it was for Verdes to accomplish this. I was told that they did not need to prove to eBay that they were being infringed on... only that they stated that they were the rightful people make the claim.
I still have yet to see a document from a court of law that shows what Verdes did is legal.
And to clarify on another aspect of the topic... In my video, I stated that people should consider protecting themselves from potential attack from Verdes because of the GuHong / LingYun. This is still my personal perspective. I have not heard of any cubing stores receiving a cease and desist letter from Verdes, or any other action for that matter. I was simply letting people they may want to consider wether or not they want to be on the radar if this was a only the first step from Verdes.
I haven't heard of Verdes perusing any cubing stores for the infringement issue. Perhaps the cubing stores took action to be on the safe side, and Verdes doesn't need to go any further... or perhaps Verdes never planned on taking any action past the eBay listing removals. We have no information from Verdes, so can only speculate.
As far as I know, there is no legal justification for Verdes pulling all the eBay auctions. eBay owns PayPal (or other way around, not sure) and it is in my best interest to not list the cubes on my site, since I use PayPal for all of my sales transactions. Therefor if action is taken against my PayPal, they could stop my business completely. A few out-of-country cubing stores are still selling the cubes from what I was reading yesterday, and a few USA based ones... I'm not sure if Verdes can or will go after them for this, but again, I am not willing to take that risk based on PayPal attacks that Verdes has made on other stores... namely SpeedCubeShop. (He has video information on this, so I believe it is ok to mention.)
Lastly,
I have sent 2 emails to Verdes, with a 3rd to follow tomorrow requesting information on their actions. I have not received a reply.
