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It's the $61-million question. What will be the impact of this week's French court decision ordering eBay to pay the aforementioned amount (€38.6-million) to LVMH for damages due to the sale of counterfeit Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior products?

For starters, consider that LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the French luxury conglomerate, powers a material universe of 60 brands that generated more than $8.7-billion U.S. last year in fashion and leather goods alone. EBay, which plans to appeal, posted revenues of $7.7-billion.

In other words, the ruling, which also ordered eBay to stop selling four LVMH fragrances, will not dramatically affect either company's bottom line in the short term. It's a slap on the wrist, if delivered by an exquisite leather strap.

Fashion insiders welcomed the ruling, with caveats.

"They want to protect their brand and they only want you to buy the real thing and in a Louis Vuitton-endorsed store because then they're controlling the distribution and they're controlling the quality and quite honestly, I don't blame them," says Lisa Tant, editor of Flare magazine. "The person who I feel sorry for in all of this is the woman who says 'Listen, I bought this bag, I used it twice, I don't want it, here's a great way for me to re-sell it.'

"That person is going to get squeezed out and that doesn't seem fair to me," Tant says. "But for the guy who's got 300 of these cheap knockoffs for $25 in his warehouse, that has to be stopped."

According to LVMH, which argued in court that 90 per cent of the goods sold under its brand names were fake, it's all in the best interest of consumers. "This ruling is likely to encourage brand owners and Internet buyers to bring legal suits against eBay in order to eradicate sales of illicit products from this platform," says an LVMH spokesman by e-mail from France (Tiffany & Co. has a similar case pending in the United States).

Ebay contends just the opposite - that it limits consumer choice. Or, in the words of a blogger on PopSugar, "This sucks so much, especially because I have a bunch of Louis that I was planning on selling on eBay, but this means I can't? That's crap - don't those brands make enough money?"

Furthermore, no one in the debate is defending fakes. "We also hate counterfeiting," says Erin Suffrin, spokeswoman for eBay Canada. "It hurts our business, it affects sellers of genuine items and it disappoints buyers." She notes that the company invests $20-million annually to stamp out counterfeits worldwide. "Where we diverge is the selling of real secondhand products or real genuine products. ... We think the real issue is not to fight counterfeiting but to protect restrictive sell."

Torontonian Lynda Latner jokes that she is the poster child for LVMH going after an Internet seller. Her 10-year-old website, Vintagecouture.com, became the focus in 2001 of a drawn-out legal wrangle with LVMH that led to her agreeing to offer a limited number of LV products at any time.

"The problem is, and I understand it 100 per cent, they don't want counterfeit items being sold on a site like eBay where they aren't in control of protecting the quality of the merchandise," she says. "My response was, you have to look at me as someone who is not the least bit interested in selling counterfeit because I'm not a reseller of new goods; I'm a vintage dealer."

Latner, who takes Hermès bags to New York to be authenticated before offering them on her site, says buying from a website that is not authorized by a brand requires a "huge leap of faith."

Others put it more bluntly. "Consumers know full well when they're bidding on eBay, they're not buying an original LV purse," says Toronto retail consultant Anthony Stokan. "But the point is, they feel that they have satisfied that luxury quotient because they have something that they would never ever be able to afford in a regular retail environment."

In fact, luxury brands are increasingly courting an entry-level market with eyewear, jewellery and pared down purses. "[Brands] want to be out there and so they're creating all of these lower-priced lines that a 16-year-old could aspire to, yet they still want to be super, super exclusive," Tant says.

"It's a conundrum that they have to deal with. They have created the monster that is now eating them."

Much of this is discussed on sites such as Purse Snob and Purse Blog, in which members share tips on eBay sellers and authenticate photos of goods. Purse Blog also links to authorized e-tailers such as eLuxury, Saks Fifth Avenue and, incidentally, Louis Vuitton, where shoppers vie for the latest $3,000 arrivals.

The steep price tag explains why people will continue to buy fakes, Stokan says. "Premium brands - whether we're talking Gucci, Hermès, or Louis Vuitton - have such a mystique nowadays and their visibility on a global level is so intense and so dramatic and so high," he says. What remains to be seen is how notions of value will continue to change as more products - bona fide or bona fakes - become available online.

In the current climate, how does a straight-up online seller like Latner calm anxious shoppers? "The best thing I can do to allay fears is talk about provenance - if came from woman's closet in her 80s and only shopped at Holts, you know it's not a fake."

Bona fide or bona fake?

Spokeswoman Erin Suffrin of eBay Canada says common sense is the best protection when it comes to buying online. Luxury labels don't allow the sale of factory seconds, she says, and if a deal "seems too good to be true, it generally is." Always do your homework: Check buyer feedback and the seller's history and expertise. And use the PayPal payment service, which insures against counterfeits and covers up to $2,000 of a given transaction.

That said, there are some excellent fakes out there, and no checklist can guarantee authenticity unless you are buying from the source. Vintage e-seller Lynda Latner has her vintage bags vetted by the label before she offers them for sale. "Certain markers on a Kelly bag - who made it by and when made - no one really outside experts and dealers knows what to look for," she says. Still, if you are going to buy, here are a few tips.

COLOUR Contact the manufacturer to make sure the bag was produced in the offered hue or pattern and what year it was issued.

STITCHING Demand close-up shots of seams and check for loose or uneven-looking stitching.

LOGOS Demand detail shots of logos. Most should be embossed into the leather. Also check fonts; many fashion houses use typography designed for them decades ago.

LINING Ask for a photo of the inside of the bag. Most high-end leather bags are not lined.

HARDWARE Check out zippers, buckles and clasps. Generally, the chunkier the better.

Sources: forum.purseblog.com, http://www.associatedcontent.com, http://www.ehow.com