Can a company choose to destroy a potentially counterfeit collectible that is offered to them? I've recently read a thread on Reddit from the world of collectible card games that I found very interesting. Here's my summary of what the poster on Reddit describes has happened to them: I have offered expensive collectible cards to a re-selling company. The company claims that the cards are counterfeit and informs me that they won't return the cards to me, won't tell me how they identified the cards as counterfeits, and that they will destroy them. Can they do this? Can I object to their decision? Here's a more detailed description of the situation with some additional background. This is about cards from a fantasy card game. As the playing cards in this game differ in their rarity, and as there are limited editions of cards, the cards are considered collectibles with a lively secondary market. There's a company on the secondary market (henceforth Reseller) that offers to buy cards from individuals to resell them in their own online store. The procedure for this is that they list buying prices on their website. People interested inselling at these prices send in their cards and will receive the set amount. It's not unusual that some cards are worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars – so unsurprisingly, counterfeit cards do exist. The company producing the card game is aware of these counterfeit cards and has added features to their printing process that makes manufacturing fake cards more difficult. Bob wants to sell several cards to Reseller. He himself bought these cards from a reputable source, and the cards themselves don't look suspicious, so he doesn't have a reason to assume they are counterfeit cards. He sends his cards to Reseller and expects to receive the sale price for them. Instead, he is informed by Reseller that the cards he offered were determined to be counterfeit. Due to an agreement between them and the producing company, they would not ship back the cards to Bob but instead destroy them. They would not disclose the means of identifying the counterfeit cards to Bob, but they would provide confirmation of the destruction of the cards on request. Reseller do not explain how they proceed in the case of counterfeit cards being offered to them in their Terms of Service. Yet, you can find a description of this procedure if you go to page two on their helpdesk list of frequent customer support questions. This list can be found if you follow a link in one question on their Selling FAQ page. In other words, the information is available on their website, but it's not exactly easy to discover unless you explicitly search for it. Now, buying or selling counterfeit goods is clearly illegal in most jurisdictions. If Reseller have identified the cards as counterfeit, they may not purchase them, resell them, or probably even ship them back. They probably won't disclose their means of identifying fake cards in order to avoid giving counterfeit manufacturers important clues on how to improve their illegal cards. However, the procedure employed by Reseller can be very disadvantageous to Bob and other potential customers in at least two ways: The cards that Bob offered may be misidentified as counterfeits by Reseller. If they still destroy the cards, they are destroying cards that are the legal property of Bob. Bob will receive no compensation for his loss. The procedure may be abused by Reseller. They may falsely claim that the cards Bob sent them were counterfeit, but instead of destroying them, they may keep them to resell them later. If Bob asks for confirmation of destruction, they may send him pictures of actual counterfeit copies that were destroyed independently of the present event. For Bob, there's no way of telling whether the pictures show the copies he sent to Reseller, or completely unrelated copies. Given these risks, if I was Bob, I would probably agree that counterfeit cards can't be sold and should be destroyed – but I'd only accept this if there was independent proof that my cards were indeed fake cards. However, this proof is explicitly withheld by Reseller. So, I'm wondering whether Reseller has the right to decide that the cards were counterfeit, and consequently to destroy them without Bob's consent. I also wonder whether Bob has the right to demand an independent confirmation of Reseller's assessment. Reseller is located in the US, but I'm also interested in other jurisdictions such as the UK or EU member states.
In the US, there are provisions of criminal law especially 18 USC 2320 which make selling counterfeit goods a crime. Counterfeit goods are subject to forfeiture to the US government. However, this requires a formal legal determination that the goods are counterfeit, and no provision of the law excuses a seller for illegally seizing property that they hold in trust for a party. There might be a contractual provision that allows this, e.g. &quot;at our sole determination we may deem property to be counterfeit and will destroy it, without compensation&quot;. In that case especially with online services, it matters what the &quot;contract&quot; says. It is not sufficient to say &quot;It's somewhere on the web page&quot;. Generally there is an &quot;I agree&quot; button that links to a document: and that document may refer to other documents such as &quot;Community standards&quot;. So if the restriction is in the agreement or in a document referred to by the agreement, then it would be legal. The assumption is that the party agreeing to the terms reads &quot;the agreement&quot;, and also reads or understands any terms mentioned in &quot;the agreement&quot; (they become part of the agreement).
Copyright is hard. The movie has a copyright, and so has its ship model. This is the original copyright. The boardgame has a token. That thing has its own copyright, no matter if it's a parody of another thing or not. The copyright holder might not be the boardgame maker, but it is under copyright. In any way, parody is fair use, so no harm here. The model has a copyright, but also infringes on the film's copyright as it is a derivative of the film. If the film copyright holder wants, they can have it taken down and sue the maker. In any way, this model is available under a specific license. The model license is clearly Non Commercial. The CC-A-NC license can't be changed to one that is commercial. You can only add more No categories. The questions: 1 - No. Your work is a derivative work of both the model AND the boardgame. You don't parody the boardgame. 2 - You need a license from not one but at least two sources: the model author and the boardgame copyright holder. You might even need a license from the original film company. 3 - YES. He made the model, he can license it as he wants, but the license might be ineffective: He might have coverage under an explicit fan license with the movie company to make the model (allowing sharing under such other license) or not (when it might be silent acceptance of fan works, am implicit license or just plain lack of knowledge of the infringing model) - determining if the company wants to pursue is not your legal battle. Your battle is more likely with the copyright holder (of movie and boardgame) anyway because you lack a valid license from them. &quot;I used this infringing model and breached the license I got it under&quot; is... a very precarious point in court. 4 - No. You used the other work, you can't get out of the CC-A-NC license by altering the item. It'll always be a derivative work of the model you put in. You only get copyright in the changes. The resulting item has shared copyright with the original model maker. He gave you a license to do that, but the unbreakable condition unless you get a different license is: You can't ever sell this, you HAVE to tell them that I was part of this design.
A contract can’t legalise illegality Let’s assume that absent the “simulation” disclosure in the ToS, this would be fraud. The question then becomes, does making the disclosure make it not fraud? Fraud requires dishonesty and deception. These are measured by what a reasonable person would determine from the overall conduct so a small piece of truth in amongst a web of half-truths and outright lies is still dishonest and deceptive. From the perspective of US law, is Bob doing this regarded a scam? No, but only because “scam” isn’t a legal term - it’s slang for fraud and this is fraud Is this a criminal case, or a civil case? Both What evidence can Tom provide to support the lawsuit? Whatever he has. However, in practice, these types of fraudsters are rarely ever caught and it’s even more rare for the victim to recover their money. They are usually off-shore in countries with either poor rule of law or which will not extradite their nationals.
I want them to give me the promised price ... You can’t make them do this. A business that has posted an incorrect price is not obliged to sell for that price. See https://law.stackexchange.com/a/4466/344 ... and I want them to stop the Misleading advertising You can’t stop them yourself but you can report them to the relevant authorities. These are the ones you linked to: NSW Fair Trading for state law breach and the ACCC for Commonwealth breaches. Misleading pricing is a breach of both state and Federal law. Can you please give a practical advice? No. If you want legal advice, hire a lawyer. What can I do? Where should I complain? See above.
From a legal POV, we can mostly remove the fact that you re-orderd the item from someone else and now don't know whether the expected shipment is in fulfillment of contract 1 or contract 2. Assume that there was only one order, the seller or manufacturer (it could be either) believed they were out of stock, then cancelled the order and issued a refund (which you did not refuse to accept). That is the end of the contract -- it has been cancelled. They cannot unilaterally create a new contract that you are bound to. That does not mean you get a free grape crusher (or similar item) - that would be &quot;unjust enrichment&quot;. There are a number of steps you could taks, apart from just paying them again, or making them sue you to get their money. One is that you can allow them to pick it up and return it, after it is delivered. You can also contact &quot;them&quot; (perhaps the manufacturer, perhaps the intermediary company) and tell them so that they can stop the shipment. They may advise you to refuse the package so that the shipper sends it back (not totally unproblematic). Given that it is possible that the item being shipped is in fulfillment of contract 2, it is important to not leap to a uncertain conclusion. To complicate the matter further, Amazon is a party to this deal, so this may be Amazon's error. They will cancel orders and refund payments for various reasons, for example a vendor failing to provide certification documentation in a particular format. What matters in this case is that you are not obligated to pay twice or to incur expenses for returning the item.
The first thing to notice is that the £100 offer appears to be a legit offer. That is to say, accepting it will create a binding agreement between you and the company. There is no reason yet for the company to believe that you have suffered more damages, and you do have reasonable options to prevent them (ask bank for a new card - that's not going to cost you £100). The second observation is that the GDPR does not really affect the first observation. The GDPR itself does not give rise to additional civil claims or special damages. Yes, the GDPR states that the company is in the wrong, but parties can make agreements how a wrongful deed is made right again. And their offer appears to do so. Note that accepting the offer does not take away your continuing GDPR rights. It just affects their past error. You can still ask them whether they have your card data on file today.
First, return addresses are intended simply to provide a mechanism by which an undeliverable or returned letter can be returned to the sender. If you have a practical concern then consider the following: I worked for the postal service and never experienced an instance where anyone cared whether there was an accurate return address except in the following cases: As mentioned above, a letter was refused or otherwise undeliverable, and an attempt will be made to return the letter to the return address. In cases of a false, unreadable, or non-existent return address, the letter will be marked undeliverable and likely destroyed or recycled. Someone is trying to scam the system by putting an identical address on each the delivery and return address of a mail piece, especially on mail pieces that have insufficient postage. If caught, this mail piece will go to the delivery address the same as any other case of insufficient postage, with a postage due requirement for the recipient. However, in this case this piece will be held and eventually destroyed rather than returning to sender, since it does not have a non-identical return address. The content of the mail piece is illegal (e.g. anthrax, drugs, etc. made apparent by forensic equipment or by a piece of mail being inadvertently opened/destroyed by a machine and discovered by a postal employee). In these cases the mail piece will be sent to the postal inspection service (most plants have one in-house). These postal inspectors might have use for a return address in the event that the sender was dumb enough to include an accurate return address on an illegal mail piece. 18 U.S. Code § 1342 penalizes those who commit crimes under false names, and uses broad language to include people who use pseudonyms to avoid detection, since these actions make the job of postal inspectors much more difficult. The final language also makes opening mail address to people other than one's self illegal, though this is likely described elsewhere, too. It does not pertain to false return addresses, unless someone were to open the letter upon return, despite that person not being the return addressee, or committing some other crime using the postal service. The only situations where I can see your hypothetical situation becoming a concern for postal inspectors or postal regulators would be: The mail piece masquerades as a certified, registered, or other special class of mail. There are many junk mailings out there that look surprisingly similar to the protected classes of mail, but are distinct enough to not raise any serious concerns (e.g. "CONFIDENTIAL", "URGENT", or various green or red markings). The penalty would probably be a fine in the amount of each identified letter times the price for the corresponding postal product. The return address is for a governmental entity, or possibly an annoyed person or company, but not actually sent from these locations. I suspect this is the possibility most relevant to your question. However, this is unlikely to raise any concern, unless a recipient or other affected party raises a fraud concern (18 USC 1341, 1342 &amp; 1345; 39 USC 3005 &amp; 3007) with the postal service. This would be taken on by the postal inspection service, which would investigate the content of the mailings for any signs of the actual sender, and they may attempt a variety of other methods (e.g. tracing letter meters, surveillance) to locate the source of the mail. However, the legal penalties would probably be fraud-related and might fall outside postal regulations per se, but could include federal laws about committing crimes that leverage the mail service, and various other laws if this is done across state lines (also this might invite FBI attention).
I would think that this would be treated the same as lost property. In most places, if you notice lost property (for example because the postman hands it to you) you have the choice of ignoring it (don't touch it, don't accept it from the postman), or you have to make reasonable efforts to find the owner and return it. If you as the sender had no idea who received the package so you cannot contact them, and there was nothing in the package identifying the sender, the receiver would be able to keep the package when their efforts of finding the owner fail. But if you manage to contact them, then the receiver knows the owner, so there is no legal excuse to keep the package.