This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate
Howard Greenspan, president and owner of Trumbull-based SCS Direct Inc., went to court last week to file a lawsuit against Cards Against Humanity, LLC under Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The claim, which seeks injunctive relief and punitive damages, revolves around SCS’s recently-produced Humanity Hates Trump card game.
In a move to gain pre-launch recognition with both consumers and media, a Humanity Hates Trump Kickstarter campaign was posted in mid-March, which drew the ire of Cards Against Humanity (CAH).
According to SCS Direct, a complaint was made by CAH with Kickstarter and Greenspan's campaign was removed, resulting in lost revenue from the campaign.
In addition, SCS Direct is blocked from fulfilling pre-launch product sales to its Kickstarter campaign backers.
"I am shocked that a large, successful company such as Cards Against Humanity, would be threatened by a small Kickstarter campaign such as ours," said Greenspan.
Black and white
According to a press release, upon hearing the buzz surrounding Humanity Hates Trump, CAH legal representatives reached out to Greenspan and requested several changes to the product that puts a satirical spin on the controversial politics that are a large component to this year's presidential race.
Greenspan obliged to make the changes with a notable exception — black and white cards.
He cited in court that there are over a dozen of unrelated card games which use black and white cards, many of which were released before and after CAH, such as We Didn't Play This and Super Fight.
"Claiming rights to the colors black and white is absurd,” Greenspan said. “It's evident they view Humanity Hates Trump as competition, and the fact that they caused Kickstarter to pull our campaign is clearly an unfair trade practice."
What’s all the buzz about?
Touted by CrowdfundInsider.com as the most successful of all Trump-related Kickstarter campaigns, Humanity Hates Trump a lot of media buzz surrounding its highly anticipated, mid-May release, earning the attention of the developer of the Cards Against Humanity™® ("CAH") game.
The game, which is in no way endorsed or affiliated with Donald J. Trump himself or Cards Against Humanity, is played similarly to Apples to Apples and other comparable games where each player is dealt seven white cards, each including a word or phrase.
Each round, players take turns serving as the judge, drawing one black card containing a question or fill in the blank sentence.
Players answer the question or fill in the blank sentence by choosing their favorite white card to fill it in.
Each player takes turns judging, choosing their favorite option and the funniest answer wins the round. Two Ultimate Trump Cards are included in the deck where the player who has this card in their hand, and plays it, automatically wins the round.
The Ultimate Trump Card boasts similar "argument-winning powers" outside the game in real life.
Unofficial expansion packs are not unfamiliar to CAH, as there are several on the market including Guards Against Insanity and Crabs Adjust Humidity.
All are touted and sold as unauthorized, unofficial expansions to the original CAH deck on product websites and on Amazon.
A swift resolution
In the release, Greenspan offered an apology to his Kickstarter backers.
He said he’s confident in a swift resolution, and expects to fulfill pre-orders in the very near future.
Humanity Hates Trump... Making American Party Games Great Again will be sold in both a base set ($24.95), expansion pack ($14.95) and a second expansion pack, Humanity Hates Hillary TOO! Launching May 20th and available for pre-order on HumanityHatesTrump.com, the company has released a small number of initial run sets currently for sale on Amazon.
Prior to the launch date, the company will continue to take pre-orders but they expect to sell out of the full production run prior to the official release date.