"Let me get the Santorum," said no kid ever.
Back in 2010, a man from a company named Executive Trading called Upper Deck and proposed a partnership for a new series of political-themed trading cards that would be used as inserts in packs of baseball cards. Despite this being a terrible, horrible, awful idea, Upper Deck apparently told Executive’s President Justen VanGrinsven that they were down and the two parties continued to have regular correspondence over the following months, according to The Cardboard Connection.
At some point the deal fell apart and Upper Deck told VanGrinsven that the company was no longer interested in his political trading cards and people probably said, “Good, this was a terrible idea anyway, because nobody wants to collect cards that feature politicians.” Or not. Because Upper Deck turned around and released the “World of Politics” insert series last year, featuring all of the Democrat and Republican candidates who were involved with the 2012 election primaries.
Of course, Executive Trading was none too pleased with that and VanGrinsven and Co. are suing. And Upper Deck is suing them back. Because America.
To use Executive's own words:
Despite representing to Executive Trading that Upper Deck would not produce such works without Executive Trading, Upper Deck moved ahead with Executive Trading's idea, and used its proprietary information, to the complete exclusion and detriment of Executive Trading and in breach of the Confidential Agreement.
Which brings us to today: Executive suing UD for allegedly being a bad business partner and stealing Executive's "proprietary" information.
Now, after reading everything, I hate to be harsh, but even if Upper Deck did everything that Executive Trading alleges, it’s unclear if it did anything illegal like violating a copyright or breaching a contract.
Additionally, Courthouse News reported back in August that Upper Deck has been producing political cards for some time, and the company’s defense is that this is hardly the most unique idea, because people have been producing political-themed trading cards since the 1800s.
I’ve included the cards after the jump, because it’s important that we all see the reason that more money is being wasted in courts. These cards are available on eBay for .99 and less, because nobody wants to buy them. But sure, go ahead and release a series of cards about Obama’s dog. Great business strategy.
(Card images via.)
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![[image]](http://cdn.wl.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/talkin-cards-with-bob-masters-180x180.png)
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It’s all republicans and Barack??
I think there are more, but I really didn’t want to look for them.
I had no idea knowing who was running for president was proprietary information!
In some basement in Texas, there is a 40 year old man (who kinda looks like the comic book guy from the Simpsons) that just tore through 10 boxes of Upper Deck cards just to get his hands on a mint condition Michelle Bachmann card. I’ll let you guess what he wants to do with it.
Well I hope you’re wrong, I was planning on this mint condition Paul Ryan rookie card to put my kids through college one day.
Shouldn’t the angry libtard with the Kenny Powers avatar be making a douchey, rage filled political comment right about now?
Nah, my shift ended an hour ago.
But thanks for piping up with a hilarious comment of your own. Nice work, champ.
Where are the stats? How many debates has Cain won? What is Obama’s stump speech percentage?
Upper Deck? This idea sounds more like an Upper Decker.
I’m really disappointed in my failure to make that joke.
Looking through the pics all I can wonder was what was going on to the right of everyone?
Quite welcome, Otto.
Semi-pro editor sez of the headline: when you’re talking “political cards,” the “terrible” is kind of redundant.
The first pic are Panini Adrenalyn basketball cards. It’s like a super simple card game & regular sports card set in one. They are cool purely for the Dufex parallel/higher point cards.
Topps made a Barack Obama set shortly after he became prez, which included a pretty hard to pull redemption card, for a card of the presidential pooch after the first family picked one out.
In 2008, political cards were freaking everywhere, in baseball at least. There were Upper Deck’s Presidential Predictors (the last card shown), & Topps had an insert set with all the candidates on both sides. Then there was lots of of random historical political things in various insert sets & whatnot.
Upper Deck is constantly getting hit with lawsuits and has really fallen apart in the last couple years. They still make decent products, but NHL is the last of the four major sports licenses they have left, so all the stuff in the other major team sports is college-based, because they have the NCAA license. But while it’s kind of a unique niche, it’s still depressing to see how THE sports card company I grew up on has fallen so far.
Why yes, I do have a crippling addiction to sports cards. Thanks for asking. :)