By now, you've seen the sell-sheets and the preview on Wax Heaven. The question is this: How long will it be before Topps sues Upper Deck for copyright infringement?
List the date in the comments, and the closest will win, something.
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12 comments:
I give it six months, I'll say Aug. 9
There won't be one. Upper Deck owns the OPC brandname and the intellectual property that goes with it.
$1.59 per pack. That's a nice price for set builders!
But... How can UD get away with ripping of the Topps design?
Lawsuit filed - 3/1/09
It's not a Topps design, it's am OPC design which UD now owns.
I'll say Topps uses the Fox/Watchmen approach. Wait until the product is ready to drop and there's no turning back and WHAMMO. Ask a judge for an injunction to stop the product for copyright infringement. BUT... Do it too close to the release date and they might let some cases sneak out of the factory and build a bunch of hype. No more Sweet Spot backfires for Topps, oh no!
Topps drops da bomb a little over a month before release date. Too late to cancel the project without taking a bath, but too early to release the stuff.
Lawsuit: Cinco de Mayo
UD throws some money at Topps, Michael Eisner uses the loot to hire Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino and Jackie Earle Haley to cosplay with him at ComicCon. Guess who is butt naked and painted blue.
No lawsuit. Opc owns those designs, you can't violate copyright law by copying yourself. John fogerty was sued a few years back for this very thing.
No lawsuit. Upper Deck & Topps are smart enough to listen to their lawyers about what intellectual property was and was not included with the O-Pee-Chee name.
I think it will happen soon. I'll say Feb 23rd.
Topps and UD have some of the best IP lawyers in the U.S. working for them. If there was a significant chance of Topps having success on the merits of such a claim, UD would not have risked the design coming to market.
That being said, that doesn't mean Topps won't try to proceed against UD with an infringement claim, if not just to try and make UD look bad in the eyes of the laymen in the hobby. Put me down for March 15th just for shits and gigs.
I say never.
The first question to ask here is, does Topps have registered trademarks on their card designs? I suspect that they don't. Topps likely only has trademarks on their logos (like Topps logo or All-Star Rookie logo). And they can only sue for copyright infringement if Upper Deck copies any of the photographs or prose.
Never.
If you were going to "steal" a card design, would you really pick 1971? And can you imagine how that trial might go?
"Your honor, UD has infringed on our intellectual property by copying the style of these 40 year old cards."
"Can you describe the design of these cards?"
"They're black, your honor."
"You mean they draw on the hip-hop flair of the African-American tradition?"
"No. They're just black, your honor. With some white type along the top and bottom. I think it was an arial font."
"Black? You want to copyright the color black?"
I pick 04/14/09. I've been on the road a while.
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