I can pretty much guarantee that the guys producing these things are not paying any licensing fees to MLB, the players' estates, or the ball manufacturers for using the players' "facsimile" signatures or reproducing the manufacturer's stamping on the ball. Even if they boldly state in all caps that these are replicas, every single one of them is a copyright/trademark violation. I used to take the time to report them as such to eBay, but after many many reports and never seeing any of the listings pulled, gave up.
If they were Gucci or Coach knock-offs, or reproductions of KISS merchandise, they would be pulled in a heartbeat, but those "brands" have hired personnel scouring eBay for unauthorized knock-offs and don't rely on reports from Joe Public to have eBay pull the listings.
The question of how much harm an obvious but unmarked reproduction does to the hobby is debatable (as evidenced by previous posts), but what really bothers me about these things is that guys like Graig Kreindler are hampered from reproducing and selling their own work because of licensing issues, yet these guys get away with it simply because they don't bother to follow proper channels. Nothing new I guess, but it still irks me every time I see one of these "unauthorized reproductions."
|