Hi guys,
Everyone keeps saying that the card faces of the USPCC are in the public domain, but where?
If i chose to use the standard faces, but with a few alterations, where would I find the faces?
Thanks,
The non-unique elements of all standard playing card decks are considered uncopyrightable (in most countries) for much the same reasons that you can't copyright the alphabet, make a generic, unstylized letter alone your trademark or patent the fork - too much "prior art" predates the work by hundreds of years. People try to copyright fonts a lot, but what they're actually copyrighting is the digital file used to create the font on your computer - that's copyrightable, but the letter designs themselves aren't, so if you went to the trouble of writing code to reproduce the letters in the same manner but using original programming to do so, you're in the clear. Fonts themselves can't be copyrighted - again, it's copyrighting the alphabet, unless your "font" consists of wholly-unique symbols not used in any language, in which case, not a lot of people will find a good use for it.
Where would you find the faces? Buy a pack of playing cards. There are people selling the faces as digital files online and some give them away for free, but the faces themselves can be obtained from any pre-existing example.
Now, notice that I said the "non-unique" elements are uncopyrightable. Unique elements of a deck would be (in most cases) the back design, the jokers and the Ace of Spades. Attempt to use those elements and you can expect at some point to hear from a lawyer, depending on the scope and breadth of your project. A lone magician making handmade gaffs for his own use will be unlikely to be buried under litigation, but a deck designer making a deck that uses someone else's unique trademarks will be far more likely to hear from the trademark holder, especially as to defend a trademark, you have to prevent "dilution" by allowing even altered versions in the marketplace, unless they're altered to the point of becoming something wholly unique themselves. If they're still recognizable as the trademark to some degree, there may be grounds to sue.
It's because of that "dilution" clause in trademark law that USPC no longer allows people to make altered versions of their older back designs, their unique Aces of Spades or their jokers. Most of their classic art was created prior to 1923 - in the US, all works older than 1923 (and some works made since then) are in the public domain and thus have no copyright, but laws covering trademarks are different - trademarks can be renewed indefinitely, as long as they're registered on a regular basis and the registration doesn't lapse. But it's that whole "dilution" thing - you can't let people alter your trademark, or it becomes unprotectable as a trademark - it no longer is uniquely identified with your products alone and appears elsewhere in the marketplace.
Two new card backs were made by USPC specifically to allow magicians to make altered versions of a card back - the Mandolin Back (809) and the Maiden Back (813) are similar to the Rider Back, enough so that most spectators won't tell the difference if the cards were included in a Rider Back deck, but different enough from the Rider Back to be copyrightable (and copyrighted) as unique, protected designs. Both backs were developed with the aid of magicians and magic shop owners - I'm not entirely clear on who holds the copyrights, but I think that USPC may be licensing out rights to them, because in each case, if you want to make gaffs in that design, there's a specific company you need to approach to do the work, and it's not USPC. I think that the Mandolin Back is held by an associate of Richard Turner's while the Maiden Back is a creation of Meir Yedid Magic. To my knowledge, the Mandolin Back was developed in conjunction with USPC while the Maiden Back was developed independently of USPC by Meir Yedid as a competing product to the Mandolin Back (in my opinion, it's the better-looking of the two and closer to the original). Those two back designs can be altered any way you wish, for the right price, and will be under copyright for perhaps a century or longer under current copyright regulations in the US - which keep extending the length of a copyright ad infinitum over time, it would seem. Certain American companies are loathe to allow their works (coughDISNEYcough) to enter public domain - were it not for the most recent extension, created by Congressman Sonny Bono before his untimely death, "Steamboat Willie" (and by extension, Mickey Mouse) would be in the public domain...
Of course, nothing on this green Earth stops you from making another similar-but-unique design of your own as a substitute for gaffs to be used in Rider Back decks, or even decks with that design, for that matter.
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