UD vs. Konami Lawsuit

The Buffalo Norseman of the Hockey Card Industry!!!!

For those who are curious, Norseman was/is a buffalo area jersey/stick collector who produced numerous forgeries.
 
If you read deeper into that thread, there's a poster who is saying the whole thing boils down to UD hiring a Chinese company to do the printing when Konami wanted it done in-house.

To me, however, I read the lawsuit as UD printing off tons of the valuable cards and then selling them off through Wal-Mart packages without Konami's consent.
 
Interesting read , and i believe Ohiomike has the nail hit on the head on this one , its nothing more than outsourcing gone bad IMO.
 
Now warming up...

SuperStock_1598R-64377.jpg
 
It does make me laugh that (Konami is Japanese based) counterfitting US goods and selling them openly is a huge market in the Asian countries. We the N.Americans are their largest customer. They take our products, knock them off and blatently sell them. If caught in the US, they merely change to another importer license. Buicks are considered luxury cars over there as they are taxes to the point of hard to sell. Yet we allow them to ship in Hondas, acuras, Nissans...ect by the boatload and under cut our market. I understand its supposed to be a capatalist free market, but we need some form of reprocity in their markets. We aren't even a free market anymore. The Federal government regulates nearly everything sold these days. Its getting a little of a political rant, but people are hurting in this economy and we really need to put N.America's intrests first for awhile.
 
I hope that this contributes to the discussion.

xxx.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-01-26/konami-claims-upper-deck-counterfeited-yu-gi-oh-cards

This website claims to show the two types of cards. The authentic and the counterfeit. Little old I know.

Cheers,
reoddai
 
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saskatchewan197 said:
Interesting read , and i believe Ohiomike has the nail hit on the head on this one , its nothing more than outsourcing gone bad IMO.
Click to expand...

Okay, the more I read of this, the more he's way off.

The newspaper is available through subscription only, so I'll just retype the pertinent paragraph:

Upper Deck has conceded its printing and distribution of approximately 611,000 cards violated trademark and copyright laws as well as unfair competition laws, according to court documents. The fake cards were printed in China in 2007, imported to the United States and distributed without Konami's authorization, court papers state.

That doesn't sound to me like UD just goofed in having the cards printed elsewhere. That sounds like a deliberate plan of printing off Yu Gi Oh cards and then selling them off themselves.

If that isn't the case, why wouldn't UD have just had them printed in the normal printing houses?
 
xirxious said:
Yet we allow them to ship in Hondas, acuras, Nissans...ect by the boatload and under cut our market.
Click to expand...

We do? Last I saw, there are Toyota, Honda & Nissan plants throughout North America, and have been for years. They have spent billions of dollars in North America collectively and employ thousands of our citizens.

The issue here is not the "knock-offs" done by other companies; it's that the ONE company with the exclusive license to create Yu-gi-oh cards is itself creating counterfeit cards to sell without paying licensing fees back to Konami. They are skirting the agreement to put more $$ in the company's bottom line.

Here's an analogy - it would be like UD printing counterfeit UD1 Young Gun rookie cards of Crosby, Ovy, Kane, Stamkos, etc., and selling them directly without providing the League or PA with their due fees.

Either way you look at it, it's bad poodoo.
 
Konami loves filing lawsuits. most in the video game industry. They have done 3 in the last 2 years an none have ever panned out. This one though might be the 1st were any action might be taken.
 
The_IceBox said:
If that isn't the case, why wouldn't UD have just had them printed in the normal printing houses?
Click to expand...

Paper trail. It's easy to defend a lawsuit if the accuser calls up a printing company to say "how many did you print?" - they can give the true figures. That's likely why they went somewhere else to have them printed.
 
The_IceBox said:
Okay, the more I read of this, the more he's way off.

The newspaper is available through subscription only, so I'll just retype the pertinent paragraph:

Upper Deck has conceded its printing and distribution of approximately 611,000 cards violated trademark and copyright laws as well as unfair competition laws, according to court documents. The fake cards were printed in China in 2007, imported to the United States and distributed without Konami's authorization, court papers state.

That doesn't sound to me like UD just goofed in having the cards printed elsewhere. That sounds like a deliberate plan of printing off Yu Gi Oh cards and then selling them off themselves.

If that isn't the case, why wouldn't UD have just had them printed in the normal printing houses?
Click to expand...

I should point out i believe they new what they were doing , maybe i wasnt clear , and dont think they should be absolved of all blame. I'm just saying this doesnt make UD a faker of everything they put out there. Now i dont back UD with all their issues , but i certainly dont carry the pitchforks either.
 
I just breezed through the article to get the jist of it, so...


1/ UD and Konami had an agreement for UD to print and distribute YuGi OH cards in NA

2/ The agreement ended for whatever reason

3/ UD continue to print and distribute the cards after the agreement has ended and thus those cards produced post-agreement are considered counterfeit.


Is that the jist of it or am I mistaken? Please correct me if my understanding is misguided as I was totally unaware of this issue before reading this today.

If the above is correct, then that is unbelievable! To have balls to continue to print those cards despite of full knowledge that they do not have the right...that is total disrespect of the fundamental principles of ownership and copyrights

quite disturbing.
 
rookjunkie said:
I just breezed through the article to get the jist of it, so...


1/ UD and Konami had an agreement for UD to print and distribute YuGi OH cards in NA

2/ The agreement ended for whatever reason

3/ UD continue to print and distribute the cards after the agreement has ended and thus those cards produced post-agreement are considered counterfeit.


Is that the jist of it or am I mistaken? Please correct me if my understanding is misguided as I was totally unaware of this issue before reading this today.

If the above is correct, then that is unbelievable! To have balls to continue to print those cards despite of full knowledge that they do not have the right...that is total disrespect of the fundamental principles of ownership and copyrights

quite disturbing.
Click to expand...

You're incorrect. They printed counterfeit cards WHILE the agreement was in place. Why? To pad the bottom line. Only in December 2008 did Konami terminate the agreement when they discovered the counterfeit cards were being manufactured by UD.

What you guys have to understand it this: There is NO grey area here. Five UD employees evoked their 5th Amendment rights in a Civil Suit, so if this is simply an outsourcing gone wrong, why evoke your 5th Amendment rights to self-incrimination?
 

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