Eric Clapton Sues A Woman For Selling Bootleg CDs On eBay – And Won

Image credit: Majvdl / CC by 3.0

A German woman listed an Eric Clapton CD on eBay for $11 – and was successfully sued by the musician.

The woman listed the CD on the online marketplace after her husband passed away. But she didn’t expect the listing to attract Clapton’s own attention. The CD itself is one of Clapton’s live performances in the ’80s that this woman neither bought nor sold. But a German court sided with Clapton after he sued.

Gabriele P. had to pay nearly $4,000 in court fees for copyright infringement. The woman, who lives in a small town outside Cologne, said her husband bought the CD from a department store in 1987. She told the court she didn’t know she was infringing copyright by selling the winnings. products for about $11. The CD was only listed on eBay for a day before it was removed and no one bought it.

A judge of the Düsseldorf regional court dismissed the woman’s appeal against Clapton’s trophy CD case.

According to the judge, it didn’t matter that she didn’t buy the CD or didn’t know it was an illegal recording. The court also ruled that if she tried to resell the trophy Clapton CD, she could face fines of up to $282,000.

Clapton did not respond to comment when request via Seattle Times. A spokesperson for Clapton told washington articles last month that “due to the gravely poor standards of journalism reflected in several recent articles, Eric Clapton at this time has no desire to engage with the American press.”

“Along with a number of other major artists and record companies, over the years, Eric Clapton Michael Eaton, a spokesman for Clapton confirmed, through German lawyers, has successfully pursued hundreds of fraud cases in German courts under normal German copyright procedures.

It’s not clear how Clapton knew the pirated CD was for sale on eBay. “They told me Eric Clapton complained,” woman told German magazine Bild in November. “My husband buys CDs at a department store, not somewhere under the counter.”