talkmagic.co.uk

Hi,

Can anybody offer any help on the following.

Is there any copyright stopping me from manfacturing these 3 effects myself.

It seems to me after a small amount of research that these have been around for years in various names and forms(not the ID.

I have recently gained access to some very expensive equipment that would have no problem with the manafacturing process.

It may just open some interesting doors for the future.


Cheers in advance

Crispy

Whether or not there are copyright issues, there are moral issues.

I'm intruiged to know what the expensive equipment is as it's usually some roughening fluid and the knowledge to arrange the cards by hand.

Quite often it's cheaper to buy the decks rather than spend the time, effort and the cost of the materials to make them, unless you need a special deck of course.

if you're going to make them in quantity to sell then your market is mostly going to be lay people which will very much cheapen the illusion and reveal the secret.

And not only all that's been said already, but... my brother's a printer, and in his opinion, manufacturing these types of effect are very hard to do to the same quality as what's already on the market.

For your own personal use, fine. But mass producing—????

Thanks for your responses.

Let me first say that I have no intention of passing / selling theses trick decks onto lay people direct.
I too pratice magic , maybe not to the standard of you guys but enough to understand the importance of keeping an effect secret.

my intention is to approach magic shops and online retailers regarding these decks.

DAT,
Including the invisble deck in the subject was probally a tad misleading.
I have no intention of making and selling ID's , that question was purley from a personel use point of view.

Siege,
I have already made some test decks using bicylce stock and altered them using a state of the art machine.
The tollerances on this machine allow for an alteration of as little as 0.1 of 1 mm.
An amount that small cannot of course be removed from a card on its own ,but it has allowed me to experiment to create the correct dimensions.
I have found that my decks on are a par and in many cases slightly better quality than those I have compared them against.

The main reason for the post was to address the copyright issue.
I want to make pretty sure that I am not in anyway ripping anybody off before approaching companies.


I hope this has addressed your replys, any further comment or more than welcome

I'm not entirely sure without double checking but I think copyright expires after a number of years anyway. Given that a stripper deck is quite old it may be worth checking. The patents office would give you better advice. There's also the ability to reproduce with the owners permission if not for commercial gain etc. Again, patents will help you with this.

Just found this:

http://www.emagictricks.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=1018

Stripper decks for £3.58!!!! At that price, why bother making your own?

Patents eventually expire, but actually, NO, copyrights no longer expire in practice. Look at disney - how old is mickey?

copyrights expire like 170yrs after the maker's death now on some things? Talks are ON about extending this even further as big companies want to keep selling what they hold copyrights to.

Crispy

I too have access to 'state of the art' machines... called die cutters, guillotines and skimmers. Each works within less than 1mm tolerances, and each is precision professional kit.

However, the man hours, trial and error, and fuss which I went to when I was a lad trying to make my own decks FAR outweighs having them deliverd to my doorstep ready to use.

The amount of ruined decks, frustration and such that I've gone through is heartbreaking

Not to mention the cost :O

As far as copyright, you're pretty safe.

However, if you feel you're up to it, good luck

As far as I'm aware a copyright will of something will last 75 years. After that it is released into the public domain, which is why books and stuff that are over this age are freely and legally downloadable on the internet - including a book by someone who is thought to have existed as E.S. Andrews back in the day.

However, my legal knowledge of Patents is cloudy. I'm not sure what the laws are on fabricating someone elses manufactured product after any amount of time. However, I'm sure there is more than on person out there who manufactures stripper and svengali decks (which means they've acquires the rights to reproduce the product from somewhere), so if all else fails then contact someone at these companies and ask them about it.

I've talked endlessly about copyright and patent law here http://www.talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic6925-0-0-asc-.php, so anyone who feels particularly masochistic can take a look.

I think Tomos' key question still stands. Why would you want to?

Unless you have a new idea for a gimmicked deck, in which case, tell us more.

I suppose if you needed an ID in a particular brand of card then a DIY job would be not only appropriate but also quite understandable. I'm thinking here of perhaps gaffing part of a Tarot Deck or a souvenir deck of some kind where commercially produced versions are unlikely to exist. Anything beyond that would seem to be rather labour intensive. I may be biased here as I tried making a stripper deck years ago using a clamp, glasspaper and elbow grease. The end result was not good. Not good at all!

from a legal point of view, you may have a problem marketing using the names "svengali or stripper"... you should be OK to use the name ID since it is very descriptive and so unlikely anyone would have been granted any trade mark rights.

for those who are aware of the difference between a stripper deck and an ungimmicked normal deck, you will most likely have no problem selling a deck made the same or similar way. be mindful however of trying to pass off your product as a "genuine stripper deck by Bicycle" since it is a deck by YOU not bicycle therefore any suggestion it is "by bicycle" is misleading. on the other hand if you use a genuine bicycle deck and strip it yourself you could say "my genuine ....... deck using bicycle cards". that would be fine.

there is clear precidence for this now. i give you one example. a guy was litigated by SONY because he made a living by selling "a modification" to your sony playstation that enabled it to play the counterfiet games bought from Hong Kong and China. the guy won the case because the judge ruled that his modification "of itself" did not commit any illegal act. therefore "it" was not illegal. the fact that "some" people chose to use it to play counterfeit games was less as a result of the guy who modified the playstation, & more as a result of the holiday'ers who bought the games in the first place at a market. same thing with modifying the stripper deck. unlesss there is a "DESIGN PATENT" and i dont think there is, you have no problem. if there is a design patent they only last 25 years max so... how long have stripper decks been around?

ok, so the roughing spray issue relates to the ID. applying this of itself does not infringe any copy right or trademark. the fact that as a "result" of it's application it can be used to perform certain tricks is not your fault. if you propose to include instructions, i suggest you be VERY mindful of using your OWN words and not those of others. the "trimming necessary to produce the other 2 decks is a very simple process done best with a very expensive machine so, if you have access, good for you. you will need to play around with ways to "pack" out the trimmer to ensure consistancy etc but it can easily be done. in fact almost every offset printer i know of has a machine that could create a stripper deck... they just use it for other things.

from a moral point of view of course... different story.

from a practical point of view. a deck of bicycle cards (not gimmicked) costs what? $2.50 - $3.00??? and if you check penguin many of these gimmicked decks are available on special for $6 - $10.

considering the amount of messing around you would need to do to make them for your personal use... i would just buy them from penguin or whoever. if you plan on retailing then, do the match... unless you can by the deck of cards for a 1.50 or less, by the time you add yr labor, repacking, instructions and distribution... you will be around the same price as the current retainlers anyway. plus, by the time you check about use of names and other legal issues, get instructions printed etc... is oit worth it unless you are selling sh*t loads???

SUMMARY: in a case like this where moral issues play a key role, the best way to determine what you should do is to ask yourself one question... what if EVERYONE did what i propose to do?

then evaluate the outcome and that will tell you if it is a good thing to do or not. for mine... if everyone bought tricks then tried to make their own modified version of each trick, then the people who make the original tricks available to us in the first place would simply stop sharing their secrets... and as a result... all us noobs and novices would have nothing new to freak our friends out with... and that would really suck!

hope this info is helpful.

just a footnote re some of the comments re patents and trademarks.


patents have a life of between 20 - 25 years depending on the country in which the patent rights exist. if you have a patent in the UK it does not of itself give you rights anywhere else. you need to file applications everywhere you want a patent.

trademarks are similar except in theory they can last for ever providing the owner renews them (pays money to the relevant patent offices) to keep them going.

Mickey Mouse for example is a Trademark "device". the words "Mickey Mouse" are subject to a "word mark" trademark... unless they are written in Disney's special type in which case they are also subject to a device trademark. as you can see, Disney are well protected. I cant imagine the person responsible for developing the stripper deck would have gone to anywhere near that much trouble or cost (i patented one item in around 35 countries and the cost was approx USD$350,000.00).

in some places, once a product has been in the public domain for more than a year with no pending intellectual property applications in existance, it is no longer possible to apply for a patent. in many places, the moment a product exists in the public domain without any pending applications for patent rights it is "too late to apply".

Bobbycat,

Thank you very much for the time and effort you relpy clearly required.

I have no intention of making ID's for resale, too much effort for very little gain. As for the other 2 decks I can source reg bikes in the UK for around $1.30.
After a recent discusion with a magic shop owner, I was surprised to hear how few of these decks he actually sells in a month(ID excluding).
This may well be the water on my fire. I don't currently want to go the the route of ebay and avenue like that.

Anyway your relpy has given me a few more things to think about anyway.


Thanks Again
Regards
Chris

yr welcome and good luck!