Question for Mr. Binder

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Posted By: barrysloate

It was CPU, and the case put them out of business. Funny thing about it, because I subscribed to the magazine and still had a few issues due me, and thereby a refund, I became part of a class action lawsuit. I think I was owed something like $7 for the issues I never received and probably got $100 worth of legal documents over the next couple of years.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

When I first decided to get back into cards after coming back to LA after school I went to my trusty local card shop and asked for a CPU--when I'd stopped collecting that was the monthly. The owner looked at me kind of cockeyed and said you have been away for a while, haven't you, and handed me a Beckett.

Still, and I hate to be a lawyer about it, but did the case put them out of business via an injunction and damage award (meaning there was a finding that they were liable) or did it put them out of business with legal expenses that forced them into bankruptcy? And the class action, are you sure it was a class action or was it a bankruptcy case where you were named as a creditor?

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Posted By: barrysloate

Adam- I'm not sure. It was 20 years ago and I certainly didn't read through all those documents. Perhaps I was a creditor because they owed me money.

From what I recall Beckett was having a real hard time proving that they had been plagiarized (if that's the correct term) until they found those identical errors in the corresponding checklists. That won the case for them.

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

The only SLC checklist that existed in the 1980s was the Bert Sugar's publication (1978?). After collecting these cabinets and recording many that I encountered it became obvious that his checklist needed to be updated. I decided to create a complete checklist. When this list was completed in the 1990s I found that there were almost twice as many player/manager cabinets issued than were originally listed in Bert's publication.

My understanding was that once an article or document is published it becomes copyrighted.

Yes Barry.

In the early 1980s Jim Beckett sued Mark Lewis (CPU) for copyright infringements on his checklists and card-pricing guide. Herman Kaufman was Jim Beckett’s attorney. After some time Jim won the case and Herman did a search for Mark's assets. In the end Mark folded his publication and reportedly no assets were found. I don’t know any more of the details.

Bobby – Your response explaining how long you spend on collecting and processing data has nothing to do with the subject of how you obtained the data.

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Posted By: JK

Jerry,

I will preface this by saying that Im not an intellectual property lawyer, but in my opinion, you did not create an article or a published document. Instead, as noted in Adam's post above, you created a list taken from public documents or other common sources that is not copyrightable.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Josh- for argument's sake, what if you discover a new player in a set that was previously unknown, and add it to the current checklist. Does that change the playing field at all?

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Posted By: Steve M.

You raise an interesting question.

Over my collecting years I have "discovered" three or four uncatalogued items primarily in the area of postcard sets, Ullman and Brush for example.

Now is someone saying that I have a proprietary right to the identity of those cards and that if they are subsequently included in a published checklist that somehow someone has violated my rights for which I am entitled to compensation?

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Posted By: barrysloate

Steve- that's my question. It seems silly that one would have checklist rights to those cards, but I wonder if there is some fine distinction involved. Many collectors choose not to share finds and deliberately leave them off checklists.

A board member recently revealed that he had G & B's of Al Spalding and Al Reach, and these were both previously unknown and extremely significant. He actually showed them to me about ten years ago, and requested my confidentiality. He eventually decided to share them with the collecting public, and both are arguably unique. Does he have any special rights to them? Maybe not, but I'm sure there is a legal point here.

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Posted By: E, Daniel

to think you have created something of worth, something that's yours, when it was never a creation of yours in the first place. If the card issues being discussed were printed, then they were originally created from a checklist that a printer had to compare to.
You have simply re-established something that already existed once, and buried somewhere may still exist. Who knows, maybe one day it turns up and it's YOU who gets prosecuted for copywrite infringement. That might not be so amusing, huh?

To somehow claim a checklist of cards you had no involvement producing, in artistic or conceptual development, business participation, etc.., to me is purely opportunistic grubbing.

Certainly not for the betterment of the hobby.

While I'm not a user of VCP services because I don't particularly want to pay for it, IMO those posters who have spent such considerable breath bashing any and all aspects of Bobby's business model are petty and small minded. His business adds to the hobby and the options available to collectors. Use them or don't, but quit the bitching.

What have you all added? And if there is something of note, how about we spend some time on this board slandering/bashing those efforts.


Daniel

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Posted By: David Davis

I remember when Jim Beckett sued Mark Lewis. I believe the main reason that Beckett won was Lewis copied Beckett's list of sets, including all the misspellings; as incontrovertible as it gets. If he had corrected the errors, and changed the list somewhat, CPU might still be in business.

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Posted By: JK

Barry,

My opinion would not change. Discovering the existence of an uncataloged card is not an artistic, creative or intellectual (or any other category that I can think of that might be copyrightable) "creation" by the owner. Ultimately, the source of the information - the card itself - is a "public" document in the sense that it was sold to the general public, created for the general public, is not an original work of authorship by the current owner and, in all likelihood, the owner is merely the last of many to have owned the card and know of its existence.

A few years ago, I purchased a 1921 self developing strip card of grover alexander. The seller had a few others including ruth, hornsby, cobb, and johnson. I cant recall if the alexander was checklisted or not, but one or two of the cards were not in the standard catalog. I wouldnt think for a minute that the fact that I realized this made it my discovery. These cards were for sale on a dealer's website - the dealer certainly knew what he had (though I cant recall if he knew they were uncataloged or not). We both had the same information (i.e. that a particular card exists) as did anyone else who saw the ad and considered purchasing one of the cards. How does the fact that I looked at a checklist and realized one or more of the cards werent listed make it my intellectual property?

Edited for a few typos.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Thanks Josh. Sounds reasonable to me.

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Posted By: Bob Lemke

As Tim Wilson says in his title track, I could be wrong, but it is my recollection that a more recent court case essentially "overturned" Beckett's win over CPU. I'm unsure of the jurisdiction, but ATT (or whomever at the time published the "Yellow Pages,") sued a competitior who lifted the listings for a competing "business phone directory." The court ruled that data (name, addresses, phone numbers) or for that matter, card numbers, player names, variations, was not copyright-able, only the form in which it is presented. Further, if the form is the only logical arrangement, i.e. card number, than player name, then columns of pricings, than even the form is not protected. When I was involved at SCD/SCBC we had our attorney (Chet Krause's nephew-in-law) look into this type of possible copyright infringement and he said we didn't have a case.

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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

I do not profess to specialize in copyright law but Mr. Lemke's post seems right on the mark to me. It is certainly possible a trial court got it wrong and that CPU lacked the resources to appeal; or there could have been a preliminary ruling that effectively put CPU out of business; or perhaps there was another cause of action that did not require proof of a copyright violation.

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Posted By: scgaynor

CPU is hobby legend. I could be wrong as I have not seen a CPU in 15 years but I believe that they were the first to use the "+" and "-" marks to show the trend of the card price and use the "RC" designation. They basically created the rookie card market.

Also, they were known to put a value on a card, but had no basis for the value, in order to drive the price of a card or set. Which explains why the 1983 Fleer Kevin McReynolds card was once worth like $3.

Scott

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Posted By: boxingcardman

FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE CO., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)

In summary, the 1976 revisions to the Copyright Act leave no doubt that originality, not “sweat of the brow,” is the [p*360] touchstone of copyright protection in directories and other fact-based works. Nor is there any doubt that the same was true under the 1909 Act. The 1976 revisions were a direct response to the Copyright Office's concern that many lower courts had misconstrued this basic principle, and Congress emphasized repeatedly that the purpose of the revisions was to clarify, not change, existing law. The revisions explain with painstaking clarity that copyright requires originality, § 102(a); that facts are never original, § 102(b); that the copyright in a compilation does not extend to the facts it contains, § 103(b); and that a compilation is copyrightable only to the extent that it features an original selection, coordination, or arrangement, § 101.

...

We conclude that the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist were not original to Rural and therefore were not protected by the copyright in Rural's combined white and yellow pages directory. As a constitutional matter, copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity. Rural's white pages, limited to basic subscriber information and arranged alphabetically, fall short of the mark. As a statutory matter, 17 U.S.C. § 101 does not afford protection [p*364] from copying to a collection of facts that are selected, coordinated, and arranged in a way that utterly lacks originality. Given that some works must fail, we cannot imagine a more likely candidate. Indeed, were we to hold that Rural's white pages pass muster, it is hard to believe that any collection of facts could fail.

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

This thread brings back memories. By way of background, I was the price researcher for Current Card Prices (CCP) when it was first published. I had met Richie Schawaroch, the guy who ended up publishing it when he had a card stand at the old Nassau County Farmers Market (that market was a fabulous place by the way and I spent a good part of my formative years there). I bought a lot of cards from Richie in the early 80's and eventually he came to the conclusion he could beat out CPU at their own game and basically hired me on a part time basis to help. I forget if this was before or after the lawsuit but believe it was around the same time. Richie had definitely heard the suit was going to be filed through the hobby grapevine on Long Island before it actually happened and everyone knew CPU had just cribbed their checklists.

I helped with some of the checklists for CCP and ended up doing mailings, collating, runs to the printer and all the stuff you do with a monthly magazine. I think we were shipping 12,000 copies by the end of the first 6 months. When the CPU stopped publishing, we though we had it made then Beckett announced they were going to publish their own monthly magazine. I remember we looked at the first issue of Beckett and wondered what the point was with the two columns of pricing.

At the same time, I spent an entire, non-stop caffeine fueled weekend creating and pricing the lists that ended up in the first edition of the Football version of CCP. I was supposed to be granted partial ownership of that quarterly magazine but Richie reneged. I was pretty pissed at the time and that was the end of my realtionship with Richie. I recall I was screwed out of a bunch of money by him too but c'est la vie. I probably worked on the first 15 or so issues of CCP. Still have copies around here somewhere of the issues I worked on.

It's too bad Beckett came along as I was hoping to go to an alphabetical version of the checklists, figuring it made more sense than numerical ordering. I still think it makes more sense but it doesn't matter in the age of the digital checklist. Well I can laugh at it now, the whole experience. After it ended I graduated college and had to enter the real world for a while.....

Dave

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Posted By: barrysloate

Dave- I vaguely remember CCP and I'm sure I had some issues, but I can't picture it.

And you spelled "c'est la vie" correctly. Well done

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Posted By: DR

Wow...a new banner ad. I wonder if Bobby pleaded for a discount!

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

I have been off line for a couple of days due to a computer failure. The computer stays on for a short time then turns itself off. Have it patched up for now but the end is near.

I realize that on this forum it is perfectly acceptable to insult anyone whenever one wishes. Knowing the facts is not important.

Just to clear up any misconceptions:

Quite a few years ago I wrote a Sporting Life Cabinets computer program. The program was on my web site to be freely downloaded by collectors. The program allowed the user the full use of the SLC checklist and to bring up all the SLC issued in any particular year, all the players on any team, etc. In fact the computer program is still available if any collector is interested let me know. (The program was written in DOS which means keyboard actuated).

This series of baseball cabinets presents quite a mystery. They were issued for ten years and there are more than 600 cabinets on the checklist yet they are very scarce. Almost half of these cabinets on the list do not have even one survivor. Lyman Hardeman did a masterful job of laying the artwork for this article in Issue #8, Summer 2006 edition of the Old Cardboard magazine.

These were just couple of my donations to the hobby. However I'm sorry but do not agree that I must donate anything to a profit making business.

I visited the vpc.com. No change as yet.

However when I looked at the Rose Co. postcard checklist on this web site I found the following:




McLean Springfield

The player that is pictured on this postcard or an agent for the Springfield Baseball Team made this 1909 postcard from a blank Rose Co. postcard. It is definitely not from the original Rose Company postcard series that depict Carl Horner photos. What is it doing on this checklist?

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Posted By: Steve M.

Why don't you ask J.C. Clarke as he is the owner of the card. Presume he gave you permission to post it here.

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

Ouch.

-Al

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

The picture of the McLean postcard is on the vcp.com web site.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

No one on this board owns the copyrights to that postcard.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I thought that it has always been common courtesy on Net54 to not post pictures of items that you don't own unless you have permission.

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

That image above did not come from my website. All images are aligned and straight and do not show area outside the card. Example below

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Posted By: Steve Murray

If one does so at least give proper credit to the owner. The McLean card is unique and Mr. Spillman knows it. Mr. Spillman knows the history of this card. He makes his post in a feeble attempt to imply a nefarious reason the card is on the site.

I'm sure that once J.C. gets his final snipes in on the Mastro auction that he'll be here to tell us more.

Steve Murray

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Posted By: Steve Murray

All of this is getting too tiresome.

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

You should adopt the ethics of your competitors.



The McLean postcard:

Instead of using a URL link to your Rose Co. postcard checklist to show the McLean name and picture I chose to simply show the eBay image from my file of the same postcard. The image is not the issue; the only question was why the McLean name was on your checklist. How did it get on there? Did the image of that postcard come from the owner of the postcard or is it just another image taken freely from web sites?

Later on you removed the McLean picture icon that was next to the name McLean on your web site. Why did you remove it? Were you alerted? Was it to imply that I was making up what I saw? You know the truth. Please reply.

Bobby should be capable of answering on his own. No one need speak for him.

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Posted By: mr. moses

that you are up this late Jerry. Not weighing in on this as out of my purview. New to site and just reading ALL the available posts........ I thought I was the only east coaster up this late on a NON AUCTION night

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Posted By: B.C.Daniels

or coming from the east coast Henry!


BcD

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

Very simply questions, no answers.

The postcard: You deleted the picture icon next to the name McLean on your Rose Co. checklist. Why would you want to hide that fact? Is there exploition here?

Your transparent number one defender has been protesting too much.




Hi Henry - Going to KY? These are my regular hours - but not quite as late as you. I will write.