Who own the copyright of t205 images?
 

I am thinking to put together a website of T205s and I certainly don't want to get in trouble of getting sue showing any copyrighted images. I wonder who own the copyright of those images of T205s?

Also, if someone own a T205 miscut piedmont back, does that collector own the copyright of the image of that miscut image?

over 100 years old. pretty sure they are public domain

My main question is for those people who own those PSA10 t205 or t205 errors, do they actually own the image copyright of his cards?

I don’t think that copyright is the correct legal principal. I think the issue is can you publish an image of someone’s personal property without their permission. Rather then thinking of the image I think you need to think of the singular object. I would tend to think that you could not publish it without permission.

You should figure out who can create NFTs of high grade vintage cards! Ca-ching!

There is case law on this -- Bridgeman Art Library vs. Corel (1999) "ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge..._v._Corel_Corp.)

Miscuts, variations, etc., were still published, and are thus in the public domain. Unpublished material can be a whole other ball of wax, if IP ownership has been carefully managed, as with a few long-term literary estates.

(I am not a lawyer so don't depend on my info for your legal cases, please.)

If you're making an image of a slabbed card -- photo or scan, doesn't matter -- you'd have a better argument that it is a unique, copyright-able work, since the presence of the card's unique ID # etc. make it more than an exact copy of a public domain image.

All that said, it would still be wise and polite to get permission.

thx for the info. it would be tough for me to seek for permission from the owners of those cards. I am just trying to share all those t205 oddities images that I have collected from the internet for the past 25+ yrs. I just hope no one would mind me sharing their precious t205 collection with others, that's all.

Newspapers publish social media posts they pull from people all the time. I think you just need to credit the source.

When I want to post an example of a card that I no longer own, or simply found on the internet, like this yellow Leever, I say in my post (not my card).

Well, if anything you are worrying about is valid than I'm not the only person on this site with big issues involving my posts and my flickr site.

Use a picture showing the card, NOT the slab, not the slip.

Public domain

I can only speak for myself here as a publisher, but there is an exemption for copywritten material and images if the material used is for educational purposes. In the case of subjects of the T205 set, they all granted access to use their image and are now in the public domain. With that said, I cant say the same for the T207 set, or all sets.

That's kind of interesting.
I would have thought most pre war sets images would be public domain by now.

And any chance to show Cobby...

https://luckeycards.com/tyt205.jpg

Works published or registered before January 1, 1978, had a maximum of 95 years of copyright protection -- so anything published before 4/23/26 (as of today) should be public domain. The copyright owner had to renew their copyright to get that maximum benefit, though, so with research one could find plenty of things published after 1926 that crossed into the public domain.

The initial copyright term was 28 years, so anything that wasn't renewed became p.d. long ago.

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf

Copyright law changed significantly around 1978.

The yellow one looks better than the pink one.

Although I think it's kind of neat, your view was shared by most of the people that commented on it when I first posted it. The seller and others viewed it as a sun-bleached, nothing-burger. (cards posted for educational purposes only)

Were early Topps and Bowman sets renewed, or did some of them fall into public domain?

Allow me to clarify this for everyone.

The issue isn't the item being photographed, but the photograph itself.

Copyright for any photo are owned by the person who took the photo. If I took a picture of an 1888 card, I would own the copyright. It doesn't matter who owns the original card or any original image when the card was produced.

It's perfectly legal to take a picture of a 2021 Topps card and publish it. As long as your not claiming original source material the copyright for the picture belongs to you.

The only time such matters might come into question is if you were to use the image for marketing use. There's some grey area there.

Bottom line, if you want to grab a picture of a card off eBay or someone's website, better get approval from them.

Here is my thought... there is a website documenting all known T206 Honus Wagners. How is that site creator able to do it?

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>> "Copyright for any photo are owned by the person who took the photo. If I took a picture of an 1888 card, I would own the copyright. It doesn't matter who owns the original card or any original image when the card was produced."

Bridgeman v. Corel says the opposite, that Bridgeman could not claim copyright to an exact copy of an existing public domain image.

Why? Because copyright law's intention is to promote and protect original creative work, and the court concluded that an exact copy of a public domain image is not an original creative work.

If a photo includes *anything* more than just the original image (like a PSA flip?) then this decision probably doesn't apply. It's pretty narrow.

>> It's perfectly legal to take a picture of a 2021 Topps card and publish it. As long as your not claiming original source material the copyright for the picture belongs to you.

This probably isn't true. First, Topps owns the copyright to that card, front and back, and that gives it protection** from someone taking a picture of their card and publishing it. Second, everything in MLB is draped in layers of trademark now — the appearance of the ® next to team names was a horrific development. The logos are trademarked, the team names are trademarked, the players' likenesses/publicity rights are protected.

** which doesn't mean Topps is going to come after you for damages, but they have that right

Topps or MLB can't prohibit you from taking a photo of a 2021 Topps card -- and you'll own the copyright on that image -- but that doesn't mean you can *publish* it without stepping on others' rights and opening yourself up to legal liability.

In the normal course of events — like putting up an image of a 2021 topps card on your instagram, or creating a website of your personal collection — none of this really matters, until or unless you create a commercial product.

---
The question of reproducing someone else's cards — like all the Wagners — is a good one and I doubt there's any good legal decision that gives us an answer. I looked at "The Photographic Baseball Cards of Goodwin & Company" for guidance here -- individuals who owned cards used in the book are acknowledged up front, though not card-by-card. Institutions who own cards used in the book are acknowledged in the back, with credits for specific images.

Which is interesting, because the Bridgeman decision basically said that you don't need to get permission from and/or pay the source for an exact copy of a public domain image, because the source can't claim they own the copyright. But it did not open up an era of free-for-all image reproduction -- people still ask for permission and pay reproduction fees.

(I am not a lawyer but used to work with image rights and find the whole subject very interesting.)


David

You are correct that the issue of copyright is, and always has been a grey one. I've been dealing with Intellectual Property laws for decades and things are always clear as mud there.

Digital media has confused things a lot, but it's about to get MUCH worse with the NIL rules in college sports.

Back to the subject at hand. There is no law preventing you from taking a picture of an item you own and publishing it where you want, unless you are using it for the same purpose as the original intent (i.e. taking a picture of a baseball card and selling it as a baseball card. From a copyright standpoint there's nothing that stops you from taking a picture of a painting in a gallery and publishing that. The only preventative is that usually, when you enter a gallery, there's an expressed contractual agreement of no photography allowed. It's not a copyright problem, it's a legal contract problem.

The game changer involved in pictures of baseball cards on a web site is that they can clearly be defended as fair use under the clause that allows educational study, parody or other ancillary use of the image.

Again, grey areas exist. You can take a picture at a baseball game and publish that with no problem, but you can't use a picture of the television broadcast of the game "without the express written consent of Major League Baseball".

Legally you can't show televised games in a bar without a license. You can't have music playing (even from your own playlist) over your store speakers without a license, you can't show a movie that you own the DVD of in a public place without a license. That's all because entertainment distribution was the original protected origin of the copyright. Broadcasting it in public violates the copyright because the copyright holder can show damages.

I seriously doubt anyone would ever go to jail or get sued over a picture of a baseball card on a web site. There just isn't any legal strength to stand on there. I doubt Topps could prove harm to their copyright protections because a guy posted a card on a website.