What's the copyright status?

gregory

As I said - I think you are OK with the black and white ones. There is also the Aquatic, if you ask the artist for permission.
 

rwcarter

As for chances of winning in court, well, I was never thinking of going commercial. I just wanted to see if I could find some hi-res images of the monochrome images from the Pictorial Key to use in a strictly private, non-commercial, non-public project of mine. This short of IP use should be none of the IPR holder's business. But the whole restrictive copyright thing on a century old work is pretty damn irritating, at the very least in principle.
Tarot Made Easy by Nancy Garen has large B&W images in the book. (I haven't tried to figure out which Pam version they're from though.) I've cut the spine off one of my copies (save yourself the trouble and mess and take it to a copy shop to have it done), scanned them all in and one day plan on coloring them by hand and/or computer.

Rodney
 

Zephyros

That's a good idea, rwcarter.

I wonder, Lo Scarabeo also publishes their own version. Is that sold solely in the EU? I assume they don't licence from USG, the costs would be so prohibitive as to be worthless in terms of profit.
 

trzes

As for chances of winning in court, well, I was never thinking of going commercial. I just wanted to see if I could find some hi-res images of the monochrome images from the Pictorial Key to use in a strictly private, non-commercial, non-public project of mine. This short of IP use should be none of the IPR holder's business. But the whole restrictive copyright thing on a century old work is pretty damn irritating, at the very least in principle.

I wonder about derivatives though. They're able to copyright them separately. Couldn't we create derivatives of the Pam-A or monochrome Pictorial series and copyright those instead?

There are actually several websites that show all the RWS images. Some do so with explicit permission of US Games (Kenji with superb scans of all the original Pam decks and Albi Deuter for example), others don't (like Stefan Stenudd or Tarotlore). So I don't think that the lack of available Pictorial Key images is because of restrictive copyright handling but rather because most people find the B&W images less interesting.

Your thought about derivatives inspired me to a tiny wee project though. With trueligh's scans of Pam A images on Kenji's website being available in high resolution I started to extract everything black from some of the images using my old paintshop pro 7 (now free) graphics software. The result might be similar to what you were looking for (see attachment).

I already ordered some free web space on a US based server where I can put my derivative work from public domain images (in the US at least) online. It might take a couple of days, but I'll be back soon...
 

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chaosbloom

Tarot Made Easy by Nancy Garen has large B&W images in the book. (I haven't tried to figure out which Pam version they're from though.) I've cut the spine off one of my copies (save yourself the trouble and mess and take it to a copy shop to have it done), scanned them all in and one day plan on coloring them by hand and/or computer.

Rodney

Thanks for the suggestion. Would you mind checking to see if she has any permission notes? The usual "this image is used with the express permission of US Games" etc. etc. either near the images or the image index?

There are actually several websites that show all the RWS images. Some do so with explicit permission of US Games (Kenji with superb scans of all the original Pam decks and Albi Deuter for example), others don't (like Stefan Stenudd or Tarotlore). So I don't think that the lack of available Pictorial Key images is because of restrictive copyright handling but rather because most people find the B&W images less interesting.

Your thought about derivatives inspired me to a tiny wee project though. With trueligh's scans of Pam A images on Kenji's website being available in high resolution I started to extract everything black from some of the images using my old paintshop pro 7 (now free) graphics software. The result might be similar to what you were looking for (see attachment).

I already ordered some free web space on a US based server where I can put my derivative work from public domain images (in the US at least) online. It might take a couple of days, but I'll be back soon...

I'm surprised you didn't use GIMP. Try hitting the color ones with lots of contrast, then desaturate using luminosity values to avoid making a grey murk of the colors as much as possible and then apply a threshold on that.

I'm suggesting the complicated route because the details in the flower devices on the Fool's robe are not black-outlined so they appear empty. From what I just saw in roppo's link, the original monochrome series from the Pictorial Key suffer from the same problem. Example of the Fool done this way. (that's a quick and dirty low res example btw, nothing serious, other details look like crap)

Or you might do both and keep the extra useful details in a layer.


Thanks for the link.
 

chaosbloom

A company called AGM-Urania (which seems to be German) is selling what seems to be an identical derivative of RWS and titled Rider-Waite Tarot. I don't see any mention of US Games. And they have trademarked the "Rider-Waite" name apparently.
 

rwcarter

Thanks for the suggestion. Would you mind checking to see if she has any permission notes? The usual "this image is used with the express permission of US Games" etc. etc. either near the images or the image index?
They are reprinted by permission of USG along with a "Further reproduction prohibited." under that.
 

trzes

A company called AGM-Urania (which seems to be German) is selling what seems to be an identical derivative of RWS and titled Rider-Waite Tarot. I don't see any mention of US Games. And they have trademarked the "Rider-Waite" name apparently.

My old 1980'S RWS-Copy is by AGM. They have a small note on the box, saying "COPYRIGHT © 1971 by US Games SYSTEMS. INC.. N.Y. 10016".

One for sale on German Amazon now says "© 1971 US Games Systems. Inc. / 1983 AG Müller Urania" on the small image of the back of the box. AGM Urania seems to licence many US Games things to sell in Europe, but does this example mean that they bought the copyright for Europe as well or that they also do all the copyright stuff in Europe on US Games' behalf?

amazon.co.uk has an RWS android app for free without mentioning any copyright, at least not on the amazon page. Has anyone used this and can say whether there is any copyright being mentioned within the app?

BTW I didn't manage to achieve what you did as a B&W fool, neither with Gimp nor with my old paintshop 7. I guess it would have required dealing with the basic colors seperately, otherwise yellow and red end up as almost the same shade of grey. Anyway, my nice excuse will be that the fool and the 3 of coins seem to be the only cards where the color provides content. So I'll be fine with the link Roppo provided.

ETA: Just tried again. Making red darker did the job.