You would think that the infusion of, for instance, the Bicycle brand in the mind of the common person would be a point of pride for them. I understand if others were printing their trademarks but in the previous examples USPC is refusing to print it. I don't think Kimberly-Clark gets upset when someone asks for a Kleenex. Just seems counterproductive from a business perspective.
Well, yes and no, they wouldn't be upset. They're tickled pink when someone asks for a Kleenex and gets a Kleenex. They're less than thrilled when people think of Kleenex as a generic name for all tissues, which dilutes their trademark.
This, however, is different from name branding. There's no denying that Bicycle is a brand name for playing cards and deserving of trademark protection. The issue here is that Bicycle insists on sticking to its older back designs as their standards rather than making a new standard. There's good reason for them to do so - it's a highly recognizable design, and magicians all over the world use the Rider Back. Defending the Rider Back by not allowing dilution is a smart business move.
The problem is that USPC Legal appears to be going overboard, tossing out the baby with the bathwater. They're seeing ALL of their old designs, realizing that the oldest ones are past copyright protection, and attempting to defend THEM as trademarks as well, in essence stretching the definition of trademark past the breaking point. Case in point, they're no longer allowing Zenneth Kok to make the Coterie Bee deck, fearing dilution of trademark on the classic Bee Diamond Back design. Crazier still, they think, in the case of the Erdnase 216 deck, that by allowing Bill Kalush to make a precise copy of an old Bee Ace of Spades, they would somehow be watering down the current Bee AoS as a trademark for the brand - despite the fact that it's THEIR OWN ACE OF SPADES he wants to put in its place.
Things like this make them paranoid, I think. They've already lost one of their Automobile backs to the Rally Brand from US Games Systems due to lapsed copyright, they're fending off fly-by-night Chinese companies trying to make forged Bee decks, etc. But it's simply unrealistic for them to think they can protect everything. They're no better than the Disney Company - if it wasn't for their lobbying of Congress to extend copyright protection to its present length, "Steamboat Willie" and all the characters contained within would be in the public domain now, meaning Mickey Mouse, the company mascot, would be freely copyable in that form.
The original intent of copyright law was to allow the creator of a piece of intellectual property to gain some benefit from his or her original thought during their lifetime, but for the work to eventually become part of the common intellectual property of the people and culture from which the work originated. It was actually meant to lapse within the artist's lifetime after he or she has had a reasonable amount of time to profit from the exclusive rights, back when copyrights were first created, and didn't start getting severely extended (and overextended by legal though questionable means) until companies started being declared as copyright holders rather than individuals.
I was never very comfortable with the doctrine of the company as a citizen, and this is the not even among the worst examples of its excesses. How much further will be be from now when companies are given the right to vote for public officials?
