The most important skill a future lawyer takes away from law school is issue spotting. In other words, when given a hypothetical situation, how many potential legal problems can you identify? This helps lawyers protect their clients. It's also why if you have a lawyer in the family, they probably annoy you when they visit your house (“You might want to clean up that ice on your front walk--someone could get hurt.”).

Baseball cards provide good practice for issuing spotting. Everyone knows legalese is strewn all over baseball cards. You may even have a basic idea of what it means. But do you really know? Many people also interchangeably use the terms “copyright,” “patent” and “trademark,” so we’ll address each of these areas too, just to make sure everyone is using the same definitions.

Really, you don’t need a law degree to spot potential issues with baseball cards (well…some issues). All you need are a few basic definitions. Once you understand the legalese, you can have fun trying to spot the issues.

First, a quick training course. Card manufacturers and licensees love their legal symbols and legalese. The most popular symbols are: ®, ™ and ©. Each means something different:

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The Cardboard Connection
Paul Lesko’s “Law of Cards” column