Quick run down: As has been covered in many places Upper Deck and Konami have settled, lots of money to change hands documents sealed first payment made.. case over. Crap talking starts… and quickly out of the gate is Richard McWiliam, King of his own world and not so eloquent owner of Upper Deck came at us with this.
“Though we are delighted that Konami was finally forced to see the light regarding its claims, there is, of course, a bittersweet side to the ending of this dispute,” McWilliam said. “During the six years we spent building the Yu-Gi-Oh! brand we formed strong ties to the playing community, and, in the end, they are the ones that suffered most because of this lawsuit. Instead of focusing on the merits of the case, Konami focused its efforts on pursuing exaggerated claims and damages which it could not establish in the courtroom.”
I mean wow I need some syrup to help wash all that waffle down…
This is what attorney Richard Howell, of Rutan & Tucker, who represented Upper Deck during the trial said:
“At this point, Upper Deck doesn’t have a lot of Life Points. We’re talking about behavior that, from a defence attorney’s standpoint, I can’t defend and I am not going to defend,” ”I’m here defending a counterfeiter. And now I have to deal with that issue.”
This is the guy that was on Upper Decks side.. so you know that says a lot.. Still Konami said:
The cover-up included a meeting in the office of Upper Deck’s chairman, in which he and at least one other Upper Deck employee compared samples of authentic Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards against fakes made by Upper Deck, and shredded the samples in the chairman’s office, as well as an e-mail from an employee of Upper Deck to other employees asking to provide her information on how to obtain Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG security foils ‘in secrecy.’
And as you all ready know you can read a lot more about that here
NOW they are going to be sued by Major League Baseball Properties INC. (that’s the MLB to you and me) The papers were filed in New York on the 31st of Jan. and reference the recent Yu-Gi-Oh case extensively. The short and sweet aspect is this: Upper Deck lost the rights to make MLB cards, if they wanted to keep making Baseball cards they would have to stop using the logos associated with the MLB so airbrushing them out among other potential solutions had been talked about, their are ways around the situation in theory, and Upper Deck stated that they would still be making Baseball cards, so people assumed that they had a plan in mind. Apparently the plan was to just ignore the fact that they lost the license and make them anyway. Intellectual Property is clearly not something that Upper Deck have any concept of. I will read the papers as they come in and as with last time I will post a synopsis. It just seems like Upper Deck cant stay out of court.
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McWiliam needs to go to prison! But he wont because laws regarding corporations in the U.S. makes that nearly impossible to accomplish. If I counterfeited 600,000 Yu-Gi-0h cards you can be assured I would do prison time. Im sure he makes a profit that far exceeds the law suit settlements in every case, so he will not ever stop until he is personally held liable and not just the “company”. What a jerk! I will NEVER buy or sell UD products ever again.
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MLB has LOST its effort to get a restraining order. Court sides with Upper deck.
MLB is in big trouble.
The courts sided with Upper Deck in one small matter – they can still release the products they had scheduled. The case is FAR from over. The same thing happened last year when Topps sued Upper Deck for using copyright card designs. Topps tried to stop the releases in question, court allows UD to continue, Topps and UD later reach an agreement that bars UD from lifting Topps’ designs. There was also a separate instance last year where Topps again tried to stop an UD baseball product for using retired players’ images Topps had exclusive rights to. I’m not sure exactly what came of that, but it further shows a pattern.