A case against eBay has been thrown out of court in the UK after the regulatory body bringing the case offered no evidence. The General Optical Council (UK), which brought a criminal case against eBay in a London Magistrates Court, found more than 200 instances of users illegally selling contact lenses on the the website. The GOC failed to produce evidence, leading to the case being thrown out, after being advised by it’s legal team that a loophole in EU law meant eBay could not be made to monitor its listings.
An eBay legal spokesman told BBC News Online that the case reinforced its position that as an "information society service provider", its duty is simply to remove illegal sale notices from its site when it is made aware of them rather than to comb through it for them.