Welcome to the Discourse, Tyler. It's nice to see that you aren't afraid to ask questions!
I am currently in the process of trying to design my own deck to get it kickstarted. I have a bunch of ideas but tons of questions. One that maybe someone would care to answer regards the copyrights of old decks. One thing I enjoy doing is using Illustrator to bring old card designs back to life. I was just wondering if there would be any problems in finding an old vintage deck, re-arting it with different colors, etc...? Is that legal to produce on kickstarter?
Thanks for any and all future help I am sure to receive, and I look forward to posting more in the forums!
Playing card designs can be protected by two means - copyright and trademark.
First, copyright: under US law, any copyrightable work created in the US before 1923 is no longer protected by copyright and is part of the public domain. This works out nicely for some of the classic deck designs, since there are many that were created before that date. For anything created after that date, some research would be needed to determine if they're still protected or not. For example, the Roger Corman movie "Little Shop of Horrors" was made in the 1960s but is in the public domain because the rights holder failed to file for a copyright renewal (something which is no longer required under law, but was necessary then past a certain number of years to continue protecting one's work). It's why the musical play version came into being - no royalties needed to be paid, making it more profitable to produce. Once a work enters the public domain for any reason, it never regains its copyright.
Now, trademark - this is a bit tougher. Trademarks don't have the same expiration periods that copyrights do, but they do require protecting in a different manner. A company can use a government-registered trademark in perpetuity with properly-filed renewals, but it has to not allow alterations that dilute the trademark. USPC has among its many trademarks the unique Aces of Spades, jokers and card backs it uses on its commonly-available playing cards. Several months ago, the company stopped allowing alterations of these trademark designs, so certain magician's gaff cards could no longer be made but their efforts to defend the work as trademarks would have a stronger legal basis.
What all that boils down to is you would need to find an old deck design that is no longer protected under copyright or trademark law. They're few and far between, but not impossible to find. Then you also have to get your printer to agree to make it - for example, if USPC didn't want you to copy an old USPC design, they certainly wouldn't let you print it in their printing facility! Some smaller facilities may also not be interested just because of the legal hoops they may have to jump through if USPC tried defending their work under trademark or copyright law.
Your best bet would be to find designs from a company that's defunct - not simply purchased by another company, but went out of business. They must also not have sold off the intellectual property rights to another company. There are a handful of companies that fit the description, but you'd have to do a good deal of research. Then there would be no one to make claim to having any rights to the design.
This might help:
http://www.uspto.gov/faq/trademarks.jsp#_Toc275426672http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_copyright_law
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