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Category Archives: Publicity Rights
Publicity rights do protect certain aspects of a celebrity – a name, voice or image, for example – but is it possible to copyright a name? Would someone with the same name be infringing on that copyright? It might be somewhat conceivable for a particularly creative name, but the host of the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs goes by a fairly regular name – Mike Rowe. And it is not that Mike Rowe who is doing the copyrighting; it turns out that there is a South Dakota prisoner also with the name of Mike Rowe who wants the celebrity Mike Rowe to pay up. The prisoner Mike Rowe is serving time for a DUI charge. He claims that he has copyrighted his name and that the celebrity Mike Rowe has no right to use it. The prisoner also says that the other one’s fame has made prison life hard for him,…
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With southern California serving as the home of many of the world’s celebrities, California is often at the front of the evolving field of publicity rights law. Here in the US, publicity rights vary from state to state, but courts in other states often look to see what California is doing when they have to make a publicity or privacy rights ruling. California passed the “Celebrity Rights Act” (“Act”) in 1985, ensuring that the protections the state offers celebrities remain valid law. One of reasons for its passing was an earlier court case from 1979 that ruled that publicity rights did not pass to a deceased person’s heirs like copyright protections do. The Act changed this, enabling the heirs of celebrities to protect their loved one’s image even after his or her passing. In California, publicity rights exist for 70 years after one’s passing. The Act is located in California…
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Publicity rights protect a person’s right to his or her “brand.” By brand, we mean everything that makes a person unique, including a person’s name, image or voice. Publicity rights are important because they prevent others from cashing in on someone else’s celebrity. Celebrity endorsements, for example, are worth a lot of money – both for the celebrity and the business receiving the endorsement. Publicity rights help celebrities prevent others from creating unofficial endorsements in order to boost sales or attract attention. In the United States, publicity rights are constantly evolving. This is because the law in this area does not come from the federal government, but rather from each individual state. Some states have passed laws protecting publicity rights; others do not have laws, but still protect such rights through common law and precedent; and some states may not have any publicity rights protections at all. California has typically…
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