Well, the Upper Deck Lawsuit Bonanza is over.
I have just received an email from a source close to the case that MLBP and Upper Deck have reached a settlement in the case of the (non) missing logos. Although the details are sparse at this moment, I think we are going to hear very quickly what this means for Upper Deck baseball and football products.
The great thing is that when two parties settle, it usually is an amount that would not cripple either side. I think this could come as a great outcome for UD, but it all depends on the money. Who knows, this may be something that just prevented a bigger loss from happening. This means there is still a good probability that bad news is coming.
Here are some more details that I just received from my source.
Looks like UD owes money for some 2009 licensing fees that were never paid. They also owe some money (probably a percentage of the sales) on the three sets released post license. They are prevented from putting out further cards of anyone that violates the licensing agreement with Topps. Obviously a no brainer there. They cannot produce cards with airbrushing or blurring of logos as long as the person is still in uniform (Wow – that is huge).
So, basically UD is out of baseball, and they owe MLBP some money. Not horrible, it could be A LOT worse. Im guessing the settlement is a best case scenario, because MLBP wanted to protect their interests and UD wanted to stay in business. I would expect that after this Football will have to be the bread and butter, and with cutbacks, the company could survive on that, basketball, and CLC.
Topps may have a stranglehold on baseball, but if the guy from MLBP is thinking that this is a good thing for all collectors to “clearly identify official Major League Baseball trading cards without any confusion” he is sadly fucking mistaken. We arent fucking idiots. They should not be able to put this victory on our shoulders, as we will lose more than just cards in this. This is about MLBP’s money, first and foremost, and for him to arrogantly exclaim that we are the winners is total fucking donkey shit. Personally, I really dont care THAT much about UD baseball, as I am primarily a football collector, but to treat us in this fashion is arrogance known only by the douchebags over at Beckett.
We lose out on sets we love, sets we collect, and cards we would normally collect, and he is happy because we can tell the difference? Cmon, that matters not to us. Most people were actually much happier with Ultimate because of the way it was done, so for the MLBP to say that we are the ones that won, doesnt make sense.
For a lot of us, we put heart and soul into collections that will now be thinner and less complete because our favorite sets will not be a part of it. Upper Deck had a huge following, and I am happy that the MLBP guy believes that we are better off now that licensing is clearer than posting it three different places on a box. What crap.
I hope this is the last I hear about this.