11 pages in and no resolutions in sight? This is a tough hobby.
Mike

I think i just threw up in my mouth a little bit...

This topic isn't dead yet?
This is a great scam by the OP.
Wondering how many sets of decals he sold this week?

Where were the BTTF decals bought from ?

20% is ok, but when you can push phoenix arcade out of the market and get 100% of the profits for inferior products it really is a shame for the hobby.

this topic rocks!

have the lawyers put on their gloves yet??

No real lawyers.

It is very confusing/argumentative and totally abstract for sure! At this point I question whether this thread can ever be used for information purposes (future Pinside nfo. searchers may be disappointed)? Can we all agree it is an entertainment thread only at this point?

We ALL get it. You are crying foul over PPS claims on Facebook. The problem is you are getting ZERO sympathy because you are selling unlicensed product on your website. You may win the battle, but you are far from winning any war.

You should change the title of this thread to "Rick and PPS are making fraudulent claims, all the while I am selling FRAUDULENT merchandise! FYI"

Hes not really selling FRAUDULENT merchandise, he's just missing some paperwork for manufacturing them ... lets just call them undocumented restoration supplies.

^this

I'm not sure how you can say that. PPS, and / or Wayne who's uncharacteristically vociferous on the topic of licensing and what he does or did hold, have provided no evidence whatsoever that they have the rights to license the IP which the OP may be willing to pay for.

Indeed, there's huge doubt as to whether the rights they may hold extend beyond the borders of the US (and perhaps Canada / Australia).

Technically, Rick could obtain an injunction against 'bootlegged' stuff being imported into territories where he holds rights, but for small parts the costs would never make sense and it would also be totally unenforceable. Entire pinball machines obviously would be enforceable, and hence Mike of HomePin hinting that it was better for them to wait for patents to expire on some stuff they were doing.

Also, if Rick doesn't hold the worldwide rights, there's no way WMS will care about the market for parts outside the US, or overseas 'bootleggers' exporting to the US. Especially on decals where a lot of stock keeping units will sell under half a dozen a year. Assuming Rick doesn't have the rights, do you really think WMS can be bothered to make a formal agreement with Retro Refurbs for the UK and continental Europe? Not worth their time. It's hobby realm, as far as they're concerned. Same for most movie studios etc.

Eventually, a lot of people in the US who have either been shut down, or have chosen to close down or never operate to avoid confrontation will realise that off-shoring the production and order satisfying will put them beyond the bounds of any potential retaliation. Once that point is reached, the PPS business will be severely affected.

Surely it's best to offer reasonable rights packages to interested parties for markets he holds rights for? Even if that is only the US, I suspect many would still be willing to add a few $ as a measure of good will for orders being sent to the US.

Or maybe, the agreement even for the US has expired, hence the silence.

Only Rick can answer these questions ...

Wish I had the need for some of the OP's products for sale. I'd gladly buy what I needed. -expletive removed- PPS and their constant claim of "coming soon" for every single product.

Holy shit, I just finished reading through this whole fiasco and it reminds me how much the hobby has changed in the last few years. Im not a lawyer and i dont really know who is right and who is wrong in all of this legally. I just wanted to add my 2 cents from the perspective of a member of the community who buys roughly 12-15 pins a year and is likely your target demographic for both businesses. I have done business with PPS and BAA in the past and make them money everytime i buy a part from marco or any other legit supplier (prob). I try to never buy anything unlicensed unless there really is no other choice on the market. I think I, much like most people in the hobby want our money going to the right people and people who have done service and work in this community. That being said, youre kind of asshole about how you interact with the community Rick, so its not hard to understand the lack of sympathy for you. I wish i could say this persona that you have is specific to Pinside but Ive met you in person, and as a customer and found you to be very rude. I had a few questions at your shop, one day when you were still in Campbell and rather than answer them you put me down and made me feel stupid for having asked the question, then spent literally 5 minutes telling me how people on pinside were "retards." Needless to say, it didnt leave the best impression of you. If this same exac issue happened to, lets say for example, Melissa at Cointaker I think the community would rally behind her in a way that they just dont for you, and its not because youre not in the right, its just because as a person youre kind of a bully. In every situation where something "Licensed through PPS" goes wrong you seem to be the first to point the finger elsewhere. The most recent examples I can give is MMR being a PPS product until everything that went wrong with delays, coin mechs, color dmd, build quality and overall costumer satisfaction happened, then it was magically Chicago Gaming's problem/fault/game. Twisted Pins had the official PPS seal of approval and i think a shitload of us all got screwed on those WH20 Toppers, as someone who lost money in that whole fiasco the "Officially Licensed by PPS" means nothing to me in regards to build quality or safety. Nothing was ever done to make it right. This would all be moot if we could say that PPS products are number one in terms of quality but literally everyone agrees the best decals are the ones from Phoenix Games that used to be screened. I think I for one am going to vote with my dollars and try to avoid giving them to the companies i dont believe in and im going to take a long hard look at maybe slowly making my way out of the hobby if this along with the pricing on stuff recently is a sign of things to come

tl;dr: Everyone looks like an asshole in all this, Rick has never solved issues that involve officially licensed products anyway so for a customers the only real differentiation should be quality also i think im going to sell all my games if this current trend continues and make my way out of the hobby all together and suggest other large number collectors maybe consider doing the same. If we all stop paying for this nonsense it'll stop.

Thinking I should ' get these now' for games on my wish list even though I might not ever own them.

I'm on the other end of spectrum. Ther's too much at stake for those that make an investment. I'll go without before I buy from someone that thinks they don't have to play by the established rules to the game.

I'll buy from whomever serves my needs.

Trust me, I am no cheerleader for Rick & PPS. Would rather buy from anyone else, except for MAD.

Anyone get a set of these decals in yet?

Spend all this $$$...do all this STRESS butt hurting over having a "mint"pin(thats an oxy-moron in itself)(unless you never plunge it)....I have a $500 beat RK...and it plays "mint" tho may not look it on the outside.....gimme a roller and paint em all black...the inside is where the "Magic" happens......... .................Joey

I used a set of them on my DE Simpsons I picked up at expo. They are super good quality and I wouldnt hesitate to buy others from them.

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He's purposefully obtuse about the licence rights because the obscurity serves him much better in the end. That way a cheap letter can achieve his goal. Also he will only make parts that will be very profitable...so good luck to you guys waiting on parts for low volume machines.

I'd just ignore PPS if I were RR, especially since they seem to be based in another country. I doubt it's viable or worth pursuing by PPS due to jurisdictional issues, if they even have the rights they're trying to claim. Hopefully RR gets a nice sales boost from this and keeps delivering quality product to those who need it. PPS sucks.

PPS could shut them down in an afternoon if they took any initiative beyond threatening on pinside. Luckily for RR, PPS doesn't actually try anything beyond posturing.

Really? How so? They haven't proven they own the rights to anything in my opinion. That silly piece of paper they do have doesn't really have any meat to it, and certainly doesn't mention Gottlieb, Data East, Sega or Capcom. I can make myself the same piece of paper they have with my name on it.

Haha, yeah, you got that right!

This isn't the courts, they just need to prove/convince having the license to the IP to the point of contact at paypal. If PPS has anything, its going to be better than what RR has to stand on. Further, when paypal looks at what is being sold, its obvious what is going on, lots of brands, lots of hard to acquire licenses. Paypal likes to freeze accounts and sit on your funds. If you have a PP account frozen from selling copyrighted goods, your balance funds are frozen indefinitely, your funding/withdrawl sources & SS blacklisted indefinitely.

Then PPS would go to instagram, facebook, etc again register as the owner/sole licensee of the infringed IP, have those accounts suspended. Then they would just have to track it from there, if a new website popped up, they would just have to find out which merchant account & hosting account and do the same.

There's a big difference in PPS' ability to punish & seek damages versus their ability to stop/limit.

I been doing some reading,it turns out that if the items are not produced in the US and if you don't pay for said item with a US company like Paypal,then you can't go after anyone for a US law of copyright infringement. The US laws do not cross borders so you would have to use scare tactics and make complaints to US companies like Facebook or Paypal to stop the advertising and purchaces of products that way.

US courts have not always applied US copyright law so expansively. For example, in L.A. News Service v. Reuters Television Int’l (9th Cir. 1998) and Allarcom Pay Television Ltd. v. General Instrument Corp. (9th Cir. 1995), the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that US copyright law reaches a foreign defendant only if the defendant commits an infringing act entirely in the United States.

So...this is going no where fast,it would take a long time and plenty of money to try and shut down production of these "stickers".
There is plenty of good articles on google that you can research yourself.

Mike

What if it turns out PPS put a block on RR's PayPal account only for it to be established that PPS does NOT in fact own any rights to a lot of the IP under discussion ? The repercussions for PPS would be catastrophic I should imagine.

Not really - PayPus don't give a toss about anything or anyone except their bottom line!

Agreed but my point was about blocking somebody's account on a fraudulent IP claim.

I would think the repercussions would be enough that you would make sure you have all your ducks in a row next time.
Mike

I'd also wish to employ a lawyer that didn't make threats based on a false legal position.

How fun would it be if everybody who made licensed products listed them for "$x.xx, plus an extra x% for Rick"

I wish they would list them like that.

While we all wish for this, you know it is unlikely. It is probably built into the agreement that you can't publish this information. This way they can negotiate differently with each person who wishes to sell something. Plus it can be embarrassing.

I remember when I found out about the tax CT has on gas. The state was so embarrassed about how much they where gouging its residence they passed a law prohibiting gas stations from posting an itemized list of where the cost of a gallon was going. They like it when you blame the evil big oil companies and not the greed in the state capital.

Yeah. I expect that's the case.

Paypal is the one freezing the account. That would happen likely once Paypal looked at what is being sold since RR has no legal rights to produce what they are producing. Paypal errors on the side of caution, to limit their own liability for the sale of illegal goods and also to steal extra money. Its not like RR can put in a request to "block" an account, it doesn't work that way. PPS doesn't need to prove owning the rights to everything RR produces, basically a single item or brand would do it.

If PPS has the legal right to produce these items and defend the IP, at most what they would need would be a sign off from WGE that they own the rights and RR does not have a license.

There's major doubt that they have any rights beyond the US, and PPS haven't confirmed they even have those ... so your postulating seems to be a little redundant at the moment.

No USA company can stop overseas vendors from selling all the fake items they want.

If giant companies like Fender, PRS and Gibson can't stop all the fake guitars being ordered by US citizens, we can't really expect better results from a tiny business.

-

Right now, you can go on AliExpress with your credit card and order this "Fender" Yngwie Malmsteen Stratocaster, with Scalloped neck and factory Fender decals all over it for $169 DELIVERED to your door in 7 days.

No company can stop it.

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Holy Shit!! An American made Yngwie Malmsteen signature guitar with scalloped neck for $169.00 including shipping??? OMG!! I'm going to buy 100 of these and sell them for $1169.00 here. That would give me a cool hundred grand in my pocket. I'll going to be mortgage free in no time flat!!!

Vid I'm not talking some offshore site selling goods from third parties, Paypal is RR's merchant account, fisher price. At least the people on aliexpress realize they have the margins from their infringed goods for aliexpress to take their cut & to still make good money. RR thinks they should just have free reign.

Rubberducks, So when PPS/WGE contacts as the licensee/VERO, what documentation would RR have to show they have the rights to produce anything for shipment anywhere? I should postulate that you've dealt many years in overseas Paypal/IP stuff before right? or not

Its painfully obvious most of you have never dealt with this before especially with Paypal. So before you assume you know how this works, you should realize you REALLY do not.

Exactly.

Tons of examples with fake Rolex (and Omega etc.) watches. Some fakes are of better quality than others. These are over $1200.00 for example, which is still about an 80% savings over the originals:

http://bestreplica.sr/product-category/submariner/

Aliexpress is just like Amazon, you list your items, and Ali takes it's 4% fee of each sale.

Nothing would stop you from selling cabinet decals on Aliexpress.

If you had them printed in Tianjin, they would probably be the best looking decals ever produced. That place KNOWS how to print high quality films!

Paypal sucks.

Got rid of that long ago.

Yes it does ,but I just love how you throw that out there. Who really knows?
Mike

That's what people are doing right now.

I went to look at a Yngwie Strat with my nephew who wanted to buy one from a guy on Craigslist for $1300.

As soon as he opened the case, I knew from the smell that the guitar was not finished with Nitro.

The serial number was a year before this model, so I figured for sure it was fake.

It played very nice for a bootleg.

Went home, found it on AliExpress, and a week latter he was shredding away.

If it gets stolen at a gig, no one is going to cry over the price of a night at the strip bar....

It's not incumbent on RR to show anything.

If PPS are claiming illegal activity due to rights being infringed that they hold, then it is incumbent on them to prove that they 1) hold the rights for the property in question in relevant jurisdiction and 2) that the accused has no license.

Something they have not done, and seem unwilling to do ...

This has happened before, with no proof being forthcoming. Draw your own conclusions from that.