I'm working on a couple of different designs/concepts. For one of them, I really would like to use classic ARRCO courts and recolor them. Does anyone know where one would obtain a vector (or hi res raster) pack of ARRCO faces for design? I have already found several good source files for USPC-related standard faces - but no ARRCO.
Another question - I am curious about how an outside company is able to reproduce a USPCC vintage design. For instance, Deckso (spelling?) reproduced the vintage All Wheel Back No. 2 I believe in 2012 and released it. Obviously, this is a design that USPCC owns - yet a private company reproduced it and released it under the Bicycle banner. How does this work? How does a company like Deckso make any money on a design they don't own and didn't create? Any feedback on this process would be appreciated.
USPC owns Arrco's intellectual property, including the face designs. You'd have to contact USPC Custom Department for more information about getting those files. They're probably no longer under copyright protection, but if you plan to make an Arrco deck, better to get the files from them with their consent.
Regarding the "All-Wheel Back No. 2," the title is somewhat of a misnomer. The "No. 2" wasn't an official USPC number of any kind - it was the number given to the deck in the "Mrs. Robinson" guide from the 1950s, which listed all of USPC's Bicycle backs in alphabetical order. The deck was produced by a third party company, but it was made by USPC - they paid USPC for the rights to the Bicycle name and for the print job. You pay a slight premium to use USPC's brand names, but depending on the design you create, you can still make a profit on it, especially if you happen to reproduce a popular design or create a new design with great appeal.
There have been a select few cases of USPC's older Bicycle designs being "appropriated" by other companies, but that has everything to do with copyright law. Many of USPC's older designs are considered to be in the public domain and as such are freely reproducible by other companies - specifically, anything created prior to some time in 1923. Considering that the company's been around for over 130 years, that would include a fair amount of its early work. Now, some of those designs are also protected by trademark law as registered trademarks of USPC - and while trademarks do expire, they can be renewed in perpetuity, as long as they are protected by their holder and not diluted in any way. Their most common designs, such as the Bicycle Rider Back, the Bee Diamond Back, etc. - the designs you see most often on their current-issue, widely-available decks - are registered as such, and it's because they're trademarks that the company no longer allows alterations of those older designs, lest they become diluted in the eyes of the law and thus no longer protectable.
The company didn't start using this tactic to protect their intellectual property until other companies had already started using some of their older work - for example, there's a public domain Bicycle card back that was being used by US Games Systems for their "Rally" playing card deck. For the most part, however, companies are less interested in the older designs because they're just that - older designs, not terribly interesting to the current generation. Some companies do try copying their current designs, but they do so illegally, and mostly from overseas, China in particular - the Bee Diamond Back is possibly the most copied, imitated and counterfeited deck design on the planet and is very popular in China. The work they do is really inferior stuff and the company does pursue the counterfeiters when it can, which thanks to Chinese law is pretty rare. When they expanded into the Chinese market more directly, they started issuing decks with holograms laser-etched into the cellophane, making their product more distinctive and more easily distinguished from the forgeries.
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