Question about personalized baseball cards

Southerncards

I was thinking about ordering some baseball cards of my son since he's in t-ball. I looked through a website and saw several rip off's of Topps designs such as this one. How can they get away with that?

HeritageAddict

They probably wouldn't if Topps came across it.

Southerncards

here's another -

NickM

The legal issues for trade dress aren't as cut and dried. Remember that Upper Deck and Fleer have copied older Topps designs (IIRC it was 2002 UD Vintage that looked like 1965 Topps BB, and 2000 Fleer Tradition looked like 1954 Topps BB). You don't have the same level of protection on a design that you do on a logo or name.

Also, it may not be worth Topps' while to fight them. This company probably isn't affecting Topps' business at all.

Nick

storm888

Even the slightest design change is likely enough to
put the item in the safe zone.

There is no chance of confusion on the part of anybody,
and TOPPS would look silly messing with the producing
company.

Southerncards

I like the designs, being a card collector. I just wondered how they got away with it.

jskirwin

I also do model railroading.
Some genius at Union Pacific got the idea to begin charging royalties on the usage of UP logos on model trains - including the "fallen flags", or firms that became part of UP that no longer exist. The royalties were pretty bad - about 15% of MSRP if memory serves. The royalties caused alot of trouble in the hobby, and model railroaders began raising a stink about the them.

It turns out that many model railroaders are also railroad workers, clients of railroads, or strong railfans. UP and the other RRs abandoned their royalty scheme last year after realizing that the couple of hundred thousand to a million they "lost" in the model RR industry to the logos was cheap compared to the goodwill it fostered.

In case any Topps people are reading this, I'd let these instances slide. When a competitor abuses your intellectual property, I'm all for nailing them to the wall. But things like this? Keep the lawyers at bay...