Nice to see real weapons and not the distorted billy clubs the Jacks have today. Makes me wonder why these didn't catch on and become the standard of today...
Yeah, like that Jack of Spades, and his lethal...bugle?
Lovely joker.
I would really like to see this deck reproduced. I love the courts, maybe because they somewhat resembles the court style of my native, Swedish, playing cards.
If these were to be reproduced, how faithful should it be to the original? Should it be without the "dimplings" like the original, or with "dimplings" as the standard seems to be nowadays? should the box look as close to the original as possible? In other words, should one aim for an exact replica, or should it be more of a homage to a great looking deck?
And I was thinking about copyright. What kind of copyright does USPC have on this deck?
I wonder why this deck has never been reproduced before? Is it maybe harder or more expensive to print than the standard courts? It seems like it may have more than six colors in it?
This is the version with the curlier indices, and plain, white number cards.
I think this version is the first of the two. Ours is the one first listed in this topic. In my view reproductions should be as faithful to the original as possible - BUT with a clear indication that it is a repro. Not sure if copyright/patent an issue or not. Hard to think it would concern USPC.
First of all, any copyright made prior to 1923 has expired under US Copyright Law, as have copyrights of selected works since that date. Trademark would be difficult to enforce since the company hasn't used any of the features of the deck as trademarks probably since it was printed. Patenting on the deck would never have happened - playing cards have hundreds of years of prior art. It would be no different from me trying to patent the salad fork; unique artistry in the making of said fork doesn't change the fact that it's still a salad fork, identical in function to all the salad forks that preceded it, so it is not a unique invention of my creation. (Don't get me started on the patenting of genomes...)
It was probably at the time among the more expensive decks the company made, due to the number of colors and level of detail as well as the fact that printing presses were as much an art as a science at the time, if not more so. As such, it would have been expensive to purchase as well, and not a commonly-found deck even in its own era. But these days, with modern CMYK printing presses, I don't think it would present a great problem.
Simplest way to make this deck in terms of being faithful while also recognizing modern playing card innovations as well as preventing anyone from passing this deck of as the original would be to use an embossed card stock and a modern coating like Magic Finish. The original deck's coating probably hasn't existed at USPC for a number of decades now. Make the box faithful to the original, but give the bottom panel all the modern copyright info that you typically see on custom decks these days. In this manner, absolutely no one would confuse the modern version with the original version unless they were very unobservant.
Interesting fact on copyright law: remember the stage musical "Little Shop of Horrors", later recreated as a movie musical? The musical was actually based on a 1960s Roger Corman horror picture. The stage play didn't require Corman's permission to make because the copyright law of that time protected works for 28 years with an option to extend for an additional 14 years - and Corman's office staff overlooked this and neglected to renew the copyright! The original Corman movie is now a public domain work - at one time, several companies were releasing badly copied versions of the film on videotape.
Today, under US Copyright Law, a work is protected for 70 years after the death of the author if the work was an author's creation and not a work-for-hire created by a company. For work created at a company's behest where the copyright is held by the company, it is protected for the shorter of these two periods: either 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication.
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