Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Upper Deck Faces Enormous Lawsuit

Per today's news via numerous sources on the web, Upper Deck is going to be facing some major heat thanks to some horrible business practices done by their Upper Deck Entertainment department. As said in the report, UD had taken the production of the once popular Yu-Gi-Oh! card game and re-printed many cards outside of the license agreement. This led to the creation of over 600,000 counterfeit cards outside of the international agreement with Konami and the other creators of the show, and brought about a major lawsuit.


Really, this could not be a more inappropriate use of legal licensing and manufacturing practices, and it makes me angry to think that this actually happened. Although UDE did admit to their mistake, they will still have to answer to the masses, and should have a large sum of money to pay due to their underhanded practices of handling this the way it was.

This isnt the first time UD has ventured outside the legal limits of manufacturing, either. In 1989, there were heavy reports of them re-printing the iconic Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card after the product had already hit shelves, thus giving employees and friends access to a rare and valuable card.

I have applauded UD in recent months for trying to improve upon an image that has made them the de-facto devil in this hobby to some collectors, yet I dont see that here. This is a terrible situation, and may even put a large dent in the company's card branches.

I will report on further developments as they occur.

10 comments:

  1. They are going to have to pony up some serious $$$$. Honestly won't surprise me when they go out of business because of it, they were already doing poorly financially having to layoff some employees last year.

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  2. I hope the amount Upper Deck has to pay to Konami bankrupts them permanently. They deserve it after creatinng the single worst product in the history of football cards, Upper Deck Black - the set that makes Topps Paradigm look like good value.

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  3. I disagree that Black was even close to the level of shit that Paradigm was. Although the value per break was crap, the cards looked good. Paradigm was junk all around.

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  4. Freaking UD just doesn't get it. You have a fan base that wants honesty and value, and they continually give them a slap in the face.

    This could cost them a whole lot of money. I'm going to laugh if Konami pulls out the "book value" of what the cards printed would cost.

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  5. 95% of the UD black cards looked like crap - the pacth base cards and rookie autos were terrible. Yes, there was the odd nice card, but there was the odd nice card in paradigm too, and there was slightly more value in paradigm - though that isn't saying much.

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  6. I gotta disagree with you. I think a lot of the black cards look good, and the biggest problem is the breaks themselves.

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  7. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

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  8. I hope Upper Deck doesn't raise prices on their sports cards to help off-set their legal fees. That shit is too expensive to begin with.

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  9. I like the part about them shredding the cards in their office. I thought Topps would bring down but it was Yu-Gi-Oh. Just think all those Authentic Jersey Patch cards came from Sears.

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  10. A lot of the cards that were illegally printed had some worth attached to them before the counterfeiting started. If Konami wants those values for at least four distinct types of cards with a worth of $10 minimum per type of card TIMES 600,000... thats $24,000,000 (twenty-four million dollars). Thats a f**k load of money, even for a company like upperdeck. Then agian, they deserve to forfiet every cent they owe to Konami after the years of crap thay pulled off. Seriously, 21 years since the Ken Griffey Jr. reprints, you'd think all this counterfeiting would bite them in the ass sooner or later.

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