Quote:
Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy
I was talking to a friend of mine about this and, as unpopular as what I'm about to say might be, I'm not sure Larry did anything illegal. Unethical? Sure, absolutely, no question! But illegal? I'm not so sure.
The first thing you have to understand is that these are not Topps buybacks. Look at the Topps box packaging. Nowhere do they use the word buyback. This is a term that collectors dubbed them as. They couldn't be buybacks because they were never a Topps product to begin with.
Larry (or you or I or anyone for that matter) have as much right to repackage a T206 as Topps does. Look at the Topps cards. Nowhere does it have their copyright/trademark. They can’t because it’s not their product. Now, they can with their own T206 bat cards, jersey cards, autographs, etc., but they cannot do it with the actual T206 cards because they do not belong to Topps.
At least that’s my understanding. I can post more on this later.
Again, I’m not arguing whether or not it’s ethical. It’s not! But I do question whether or not it’s illegal.
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That is an interesting question, but I think it's important to separate out the two different issues here.
The first question is whether there was any sort of copyright or trademark infringement. I'm not an expert in that area, but since Topps may not have a copyright or trademark on the buy back holder, I can see why that may create some gray area in this particular situation.
However, as to the question of whether this violates any criminal laws, I would still say yes. Criminal liability usually attaches where there is an intent to defraud. Here, I think there was pretty clearly an intent to defraud based on the way he packaged the cards. He was clearly trying to deceive the purchasers. I believe that would come within most state and federal fraud-related statutes.