The Right of Publicity: Controlling Commercial Use of Name Image and Likeness

68 questions on the right of publicity, answered and cited by the UpLaw editorial team.

• Are there statutory minimum damages for publicity violations?
• Are video games protected speech in right-of-publicity cases?
• Can a business use a celebrity look-alike if it never mentions the celebrity's name?
• Can a company use a sound-alike singer to imitate a celebrity's voice in an ad?
• Can a narrow state statute defeat a claim that a broad common-law right would allow?
• Can an online platform be liable for a user's violation of someone's publicity rights?
• Can a postmortem publicity right be lost through non-use?
• Can copyright law defeat a right-of-publicity claim?
• Can I get an injunction stopping the unauthorized use of my identity?
• Can I license a news photo of a celebrity and use it in my advertisement?
• Can right-of-publicity rights be sold or licensed?
• Can violating someone's right of publicity be a crime?
• Do corporations have a right of publicity?
• Does an estate have to register a deceased person's publicity rights?
• Does a publicity licensor have to exercise quality control like a trademark licensor?
• Does consent to use someone's identity have to be in writing?
• Does owning the copyright in a photograph let me use the subject's likeness in an ad?
• Does the right of publicity apply differently to a documentary than to a commercial?
• Does the right of publicity protect against hurt feelings or false statements?
• Do First Amendment defenses protect advertising uses of a celebrity's identity?
• Do I have to prove the defendant intended to use my identity?
• Do I need to buy someone's life rights to make a film or book about them?
• Do politicians have right-of-publicity claims?
• Do you have to be famous to have a right of publicity?
• How are damages measured in a right-of-publicity case?
• How did domicile cost the Marilyn Monroe estate its publicity rights?
• How did the video-game cases lead to college athlete NIL rights?
• How does the right of publicity differ from defamation and false light?
• How does the right of publicity differ from the privacy tort of appropriation?
• How do I tell whether a use of someone's image is a publicity violation?
• How long does a postmortem right of publicity last?
• How long do I have to bring a right-of-publicity claim?
• How many right-of-publicity cases has the Supreme Court decided?
• How should someone with a valuable identity plan their estate?
• Is parody a defense to a right-of-publicity claim?
• Is there a federal right of publicity?
• Is there an exemption for brief or incidental uses of someone's identity?
• What attributes of a person does the right of publicity protect?
• What did In re Jackson hold about copyright preemption of publicity claims?
• What did Waits v. Frito-Lay add to the voice-imitation cases?
• What did White v. Samsung decide about the outer limits of the right of publicity?
• What did Zacchini hold about the First Amendment and the right of publicity?
• What digital-replica laws has California enacted?
• What does “identifiability” mean in a right-of-publicity case?
• What does Tennessee's ELVIS Act do?
• What federal law addresses nonconsensual AI-generated intimate imagery?
• What happened to Prince's publicity rights, and what does it teach?
• What is a “digital replica” in publicity law?
• What is a Lanham Act false-endorsement claim and how does it differ from a publicity claim?
• What is the newsworthiness exemption to the right of publicity?
• What is the right of publicity?
• What is the Rogers test and when does it apply to publicity claims?
• What is the transformative-use test?
• What kinds of depictions pass the transformative-use test?
• What should a business do before using anyone's identity commercially?
• What should a celebrity endorsement agreement cover?
• What should I do if my identity is being used without permission?
• What was Judge Kozinski's criticism of White v. Samsung?
• What would the NO FAKES Act do?
• When does copyright preemption fail to defeat a publicity claim?
• Where did the right of publicity come from?
• Which cases found publicity claims preempted by copyright?
• Which state's law governs a postmortem right-of-publicity claim?
• Why did privacy law fit celebrities so badly?
• Why did realistic video-game avatars of athletes fail the transformative-use test?
• Why does New York case law on the nature of the right of publicity seem contradictory?
• Why has generative AI made the right of publicity urgent?
• Why is “whose law applies” often the most important question in a right-of-publicity case?