I must be
having a déjà vu moment when I was reading up on Panini’s new Crusade
Basketball… or maybe I saw the same exact design when I reviewed Leaf’s
2013 Valiant Football last week or it could have been 2 years ago when
Leaf released the 2011 Leaf Valiant Draft Baseball set.
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| 2011 Leaf Valiant Draft Baseball |
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| 2013 Leaf Valiant Football |
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| 2012-13 Panini Crusade Basketball |
Given Leaf has designed the set based on the Crusade inserts from the 1998 Donruss Baseball and 1998 Donruss Rookies & Stars Football releases but somewhere along the design phase, even if nobody knew anything about the 2013 Leaf Valiant Football release, someone had to have realized “Hey, didn’t Leaf do this exact same design in 2011?”
Panini even made an additional post on The Knight's Lance blog after the original announcement of the upcoming set explaining the history of the card design showing that it is separate from Leaf's Valiant designs.
I do like the design because it is a reminder of the crazy sets of the 1990s and I would consider buying both Leaf’s and Panini’s products but there will be collectors out there making noise about the similar designs.
That is exactly what I thought... "wuuut."
ReplyDeleteThe question now becomes: who sues who for copyright infringement. You know it'll happen. Is Panini saying "look, it's our design since we own Donruss and we can do it better" or will Leaf claim that, by owning the Leaf name and having released the set two years ago without any word from Panini, they now have the claim to the design? Interesting conundrum since the manufacturers seem to be pretty quick to get involved in court.
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