I know this has probably been beaten to death already, but when you see a badge or anything else from your GLO being sold on ebay, there are only a few things you can actually do about it. Most headquarters don't have funds available to "rescue" these items.
1) If you have an ebay account, you can email ("send a question") to the seller advising them of copyright and trademark issues.
2) You can report the violation to ebay starting on
this page.
3) You can report the violation to your headquarters to (hopefully) have a representative of HQ contact the seller directly.
4) If you are a representative of HQ (i.e. you have authority to act either as the copyright/trademark owner or an agent of the owner), you can enroll in ebay's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program, information about which is available
here.
Unfortunately, unless you're a rep from HQ and can actually take/enforce legal action against the seller, there's nothing else you can do about it. At that point, it's up to either ebay to terminate the auction (assuming you reported it), or to the seller to voluntarily terminate the auction (which they usually won't do).
In most cases, anything bearing the name, initials, coat of arms, badge, other insignia, or combination of any of these are protected by copyrights and/or trademarks and/or patents. The major problem is, even though ebay's administrators are fully aware that auctions of these types of items violate the rights of our fraternities and sororities, they continue to allow the auctions to continue. These people are worse than napster as far as I'm concerned! The most any of us can do is to get our HQs to enroll in ebay's VeRO program and have someone continually monitor the site to catch violations.
The following links might be of use to you...
For auctions involving copyright issues, click
here.
For auctions involving trademarked issues, click
here.
For auctions involving alumni directories or other contact lists, click
here.
Ebay: the Napster of Greek insignia
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