I wonder how they'd pull the same trick on 2021, gregory. It might expose them to a measure of opprobrium if they do that.
You think they don't already HAVE a measure of opprobrium ? I support Kaplan in bring Tarot into the mainstream as he has done - but this thing is beginning to give a nasty taste even in this Kaplan supporter's mouth.
Can people from Germany or other countries buy English versions? And maybe help the poor people of the US?
If it is indeed available in English in Continental Europe - that should be possible. But Kaplan and some other people from USG are members here, so I wouldn't say too much if you try to go that route. I have asked AGM if it is still available in English anywhere, and she hasn't answered.
I'm not very good with legalese, but I'll try my best to present the issues in a nutshell.
As far as I know, in the UK and US a work falls into the public domain 70 years after the author's death - meaning basically that anyone can use it to his/her own purpose/s. Waite died in 1942, so the copyright should have expired by 2012.
However, US Games contested that Pamela Colman-Smith is also a copyright owner even tho some laws posit the copyright owner as the person who commissions the drawings and not necessarily the one who executed it. Because of this and because Smith died in 1951, US Games maintained that the copyright would only expire 70 years after that - on 2021.
And come 2021 they will have some other reason....
Am misunderstanding something here - are they saying in the email that they can't sell other languages (like German, Spanish, Portuguese) in UK / US outlets or is that essentially an "it won't ever be printed in English"?
It isn't the language, I suspect - though I suppose that COULD be something USG use as a lever. I supposed it could be argued that putting "Herrscherin" instead of Empress makes it a different card and not copyright... Except that USG used to sell it in many languages too, and likely still do.
In your place (people who want it in another language) I would trawl all the European amazon sites (and ebay, of course) and if you find one, then find someone on the continent (as we say in the UK !) and see what you can work out. I got my German ones from UK amazon.... Probably they shouldn't have sold them to me; I guess that happened before USG landed on AGM.