Posted By:
mcavoyGood info and good work.
My understanding: copyright is/was not "granted." As a result, it does not correspond to when printing occurred, or when distribution occurred. It is claimed by statement (that (c)) and by following strict the legal requirements. The Federal office passively processed and catalogued the materials, and left it up to the copyright holders to defend their rights to reproduction and distribution. Although similar, the patent office is more active in determining patent awards (which may be challenged by plaintiffs and defendents)
Assuming Leaf wrote the player's bio., Leaf submitted two copies to the federal office handling copyright, and claimed the rights to reproduce and distribute the written bio's from that date. Leaf did not have to submit baseball cards, because it obtained copytight to the bio., as I understand it. Copyright to the pictures is a different matter. As the rights holder, it could have printed the bio. on anything it wanted, and it would have retained the rights in any case.
Anyone could write, reproduce, and distribute a player's bio., but no one could reproduce for sale and distribute Leaf's written version. As the copyright holder to the bio's, Leaf (presumably it owned the rights to reproduction and distribution of the bio's) could have assigned the reproduction rights to anyone. It evidentally printed cards with the different copyright dates at one time (sounds like 1949) and distributed them for sale in series at one point in time (sounds like 1949).
It would be normal for a bio. printed printed at two different dates to carry an identical copyright year. It would not make sense for the same written bio. to be printed with two different dates, an occurrence which might even be grounds for loss of copyright, although I am unsure (I do not doubt it has happened and that the matter has been decided in the courts - I don't have access to Nexis/Lexis, so I don't know, for sure)
Copyright holders challenge in a civil action when a violation is determined. The court decides, in part, whether the plaintiff holds a valid copyright. Leaf's willingness to copyright player bio's suggests post-war baseball cards, mags and pulps was pretty cut-throat. Leaf appears to have wanted to threaten any firm contemplating plagiarizing its card reverses.
Lots of lawyers here, please correct my recollection errors