Net54baseball.com Forums - Copyright/Trademark issues

Posted By: Paul The copyright laws don't prevent anyone from reselling an original card. They only prevent you from copying (reprinting) the card, or selling an unauthorized copy. Many vintage baseball cards were once protected by the copyright laws. For example, the famous uncut sheets of Old Judge cards in the Library of Congress were originally sent by Old Judge to the Copyright Office to obtain copyright protection. You also will occasionally see for sale the original 1933 Goudey cards sent to the Copyright Office for copyright protection. Copyrights eventually do expire. For cards (and everything else) dated before 1976, I believe the copyrights expired after 56 years, though I'm not 100% sure about this time period, and Congress does sometimes extend these periods. In addition, copyrights effectively expire when a company goes out of business and never sells its rights to anyone. I believe Goudey went out of business long ago, and I've never heard anyone claim that they purchased Goudey's rights. If you're interested in reprinting a set, and have concerns about possible copyright problems, I would call the Copyright Office in Washington D.C. If you give them the date when a set was distributed (like 1910), they should be able to tell you whether there is any chance that the copyright is still in force. If the Copyright Office isn't helpful, you might try to contact someone else who has reprinted sets in the past -- Bert Sugar, Dover Publishing, Larry Fritsch, and Frank Slocum come to mind. (Slocum published a book with pictures of cards, not actual card reprints, but it's the same thing). Your only other real choice is to contact one of society's leeches (a lawyer). Lawyers who specialize in copyright law should be able to determine whether a particular card set was ever protected by copyrights, and whether the copyrights have expired. A separate problem you might encounter is the rights owned by the players themselves, or their heirs. Every famous person has what is called a "right of publicity." This right prevents other people from using their name or photograph for commercial gain without permission. For vintage sets, this USUALLY isn't a problem. For a player to have a right of publicity, he must have claimed that right during his lifetime. Back in 1910, there was no such thing as a "right of publicity", so no players made any claims. However, the heirs of a few players -- particularly Babe Ruth's heirs -- have tried to stop others from using the player's name and picture without their permission. They are usually unsuccessful, but it can be an expensive court battle to defeat their claims. I hope this helps. Good luck! Paul