Right of Publicity
Name, image, likeness, and voice — the state-law right of publicity at the frontier of generative artificial intelligence.
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Lehrman v. Lovo: Why the Right of Publicity — Not Copyright — Governs AI Voice Cloning
A federal court let voice actors' right-of-publicity and contract claims against an AI voice-cloning company proceed while dismissing their copyright theories. The decision maps the legal terrain for performers facing synthetic replicas of their voices.
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Hart v. Electronic Arts: The Transformative-Use Test and an Athlete's Likeness in a Video Game
The Third Circuit held that EA's photorealistic use of a college quarterback's avatar in NCAA Football was not transformative enough to defeat his right of publicity — adopting the transformative-use test as the circuit's framework for likeness-in-media disputes.
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Midler v. Ford Motor Co.: When a Sound-Alike Steals an Identity
The Ninth Circuit held that deliberately imitating a widely known singer's distinctive voice to sell a product is a California tort — even though a voice itself is not copyrightable.
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Are You Experienced, After Death? The Ninth Circuit, Jimi Hendrix, and the Post-Mortem Right of Publicity
Experience Hendrix v. HendrixLicensing.com upheld Washington's post-mortem publicity statute as applied to a New York-domiciled rock legend, exposing how a fractured state-law patchwork now governs the dead.
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No One Owns History: De Havilland v. FX and the First Amendment Defense to Right-of-Publicity Claims
How California's appellate court used the First Amendment to dismiss Olivia de Havilland's publicity and false-light suit over the 'Feud' docudrama.
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When a Robot Becomes You: White v. Samsung and the Reach of Identity
The Ninth Circuit held that a game-show robot could appropriate Vanna White's identity, untethering the right of publicity from name and likeness.
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House v. NCAA: The Settlement That Made College Athletes Paid Licensors
Judge Wilken's final approval of the $2.8 billion House settlement converts decades of amateurism doctrine into a licensed, revenue-shared market for athlete name, image, and likeness.
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A Release Is Not a License to All: Electra v. 59 Murray Enterprises and the Models Whose Images Sold the Nightclub
The Second Circuit revived right-of-publicity claims by professional models whose photographs were lifted to advertise strip clubs online, holding that a release signed for one purpose is not consent against the world.
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Identity Is Not a Work of Authorship: Toney v. L'Oréal and the Limits of Copyright Preemption
The Seventh Circuit's Toney decision holds that the Copyright Act does not preempt an Illinois Right of Publicity Act claim, anchoring the rule that a persona is neither fixed nor authored.
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Milton Greene v. Marilyn Monroe LLC: How a Star's Domicile Decided Who Owns Her Image
The Ninth Circuit held that Marilyn Monroe's estate, having sworn for forty years that she died a New Yorker to dodge California estate tax, was judicially estopped from claiming California domicile to capture a posthumous right of publicity worth millions.
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Booth v. Colgate-Palmolive: New York's Refusal to Protect a Voice Alone
A Southern District of New York court held that imitating an actress's famous voice — without using her name or likeness — was not unfair competition, defamation, or a Lanham Act violation.
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The Intellectual Property Door in Section 230: Hepp v. Facebook
The Third Circuit held that Section 230 does not immunize platforms from state right-of-publicity claims, splitting from the Ninth Circuit on the law's intellectual-property carve-out.
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MLK Center v. American Heritage Products: A Descendible Publicity Right Without a Lifetime License
Georgia's Supreme Court held that Dr. King's right of publicity survived his death and was inheritable even though he never licensed his identity for profit — uncoupling descendibility from lifetime commercial exploitation and reshaping what a non-commercial figure's estate can protect.
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California's Digital-Replica Statutes: AB 2602 and AB 1836 Split the Living from the Dead
California's two 2024 digital-replica laws take different routes — one voids consent-by-contract for living performers, the other extends the post-mortem right of publicity to AI replicas of the deceased — and together they reset the rules for Hollywood.
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Licensing the Image, Not the Athlete: Maloney v. T3Media and Copyright Preemption of the Right of Publicity
The Ninth Circuit held that former NCAA players' publicity claims over an online photo-licensing service were preempted by copyright, because the suit attacked control of the photographs themselves rather than use of the players' identities on merchandise or in ads.
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Lew Alcindor in an Oldsmobile Ad: Abdul-Jabbar and the Persistence of a Former Name
The Ninth Circuit held that a celebrity's discarded birth name remains part of his identity, reviving claims over an Oldsmobile commercial.
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Stories Taken from Life: Sarver v. Chartier and the First Amendment Shield for Films
A soldier who said The Hurt Locker was built on his life lost to the First Amendment, which protects storytellers who transform real people into art on matters of public concern.
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Johnson v. NCAA: Can a College Athlete Be an Employee?
The Third Circuit refused to treat amateurism as a bar to wage claims, adopting an economic-realities test that could make some college athletes employees entitled to pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
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Davis v. Electronic Arts: Retired NFL Players, the Incidental-Use Defense, and the Limits of First Amendment Cover
The Ninth Circuit held that EA's unlicensed use of thousands of former NFL players on Madden's historic teams was central, not incidental, and that Keller foreclosed EA's transformative-use, public-interest, and Rogers defenses.
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A Borrowed Life Is Not a Borrowed Face: Gravano v. Take-Two
New York's highest court held that even a video-game character built from a reality star's biography is not actionable when the avatar is not recognizable as her.
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Valentino's Ghost and the First Amendment: Guglielmi's Concurrence That Outlived the Holding
The California Supreme Court's 1979 companion to Lugosi denied a descendible right of publicity, but Chief Justice Bird's concurrence on fictionalized portrayals of the dead became enduringly influential.
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A Face Is Not a Photograph: KNB Enterprises v. Matthews and Why § 3344 Survives Copyright Preemption
A California appellate court held that models' statutory right-of-publicity claims under Civil Code § 3344 are not preempted by federal copyright, because a human likeness is not copyrightable even when captured in a copyrighted image.
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Sinatra v. Goodyear: When a Music License Defeats a Voice Claim
The Ninth Circuit held that Nancy Sinatra could not stop a tire company from using sound-alike singers on a song it had lawfully licensed — because federal copyright policy preempted her state passing-off claim.
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The ELVIS Act: Tennessee Makes 'Voice' a Protected Property Right Against AI Cloning
Tennessee's 2024 ELVIS Act became the first U.S. law to write an individual's voice into the right of publicity and to reach the AI tools that clone it — a statute, not a court ruling, and a template other states are now copying.
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NCAA v. Alston: A Unanimous Court Removes Amateurism's Shield
The Supreme Court unanimously held that NCAA limits on education-related benefits violate the Sherman Act, and Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence signaled that the broader amateurism model was living on borrowed time.
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Estate of Presley v. Russen: Where an Estate's Publicity License Stops and a Tribute Show Begins
A New Jersey court held that Elvis Presley's right of publicity descended to his estate and barred impersonator merchandise and confusing marketing — but declined to shut down the live 'Big El Show' itself, drawing an early line between licensable identity and protected performance.
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Robots at the Cheers Bar: Wendt, Animatronics, and the Persona of a Role
The Ninth Circuit let two Cheers actors take their right-of-publicity claim to trial over airport-bar robots evoking their characters.
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Fame Falls to the Public: Memphis Development v. Factors and Elvis's Post-Mortem Persona
Why the Sixth Circuit held in 1980 that Elvis Presley's right of publicity died with him and passed into the public domain—an Erie prediction Tennessee would later reject.
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Brown v. Electronic Arts: Why the Rogers Test Sank Jim Brown's Likeness Claim the Same Day Keller Won
The Ninth Circuit held that a Hall of Famer's Lanham Act false-endorsement claim over his avatar in Madden NFL was governed by the Rogers artistic-relevance test — and lost — even as a right-of-publicity claim on similar facts survived.
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Raw Material or the Whole Point: Comedy III and the Birth of the Transformative-Use Test
California's Supreme Court borrowed copyright's transformation idea to decide when celebrity art is protected speech—and held that literal Three Stooges drawings are not.
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When the Magazine Wins: Hoffman v. Capital Cities/ABC and the First Amendment Limit on the Right of Publicity
The Ninth Circuit reversed a $3 million judgment for Dustin Hoffman, holding that a digitally altered photograph in an editorial fashion feature was protected speech, not a commercial appropriation of his likeness.
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Lahr v. Adell Chemical Co.: The Sound-Alike Case That Predated Midler by a Generation
Long before the right of publicity protected a voice, the First Circuit held that imitating a famous comedian's distinctive vocal style to sell a product could state a claim for unfair competition.
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Young v. NeoCortext: When a Face-Swap App Meets California's Right of Publicity
The Ninth Circuit let a Big Brother contestant's putative class action over the Reface deepfake app proceed, rejecting both a copyright-preemption defense and a transformative-use shield at the pleading stage.
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Keller v. Electronic Arts: The Ninth Circuit Adopts the Transformative-Use Test for College Athletes' Likenesses
On materially identical facts to Hart, the Ninth Circuit held that EA's photorealistic depiction of college football players in NCAA Football flunked California's transformative-use test and enjoyed no First Amendment shield.
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O'Bannon v. NCAA: The Likeness Case That Cracked Amateurism
The Ninth Circuit held that NCAA rules barring athletes from sharing in the commercial use of their own names, images, and likenesses violated antitrust law, but capped the remedy at the cost of attendance.
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When the Avatar Is You: Lohan v. Take-Two and the Recognizability Line
New York's highest court held that a video-game avatar can be a 'portrait' under the right of publicity, but only if the public can actually recognize the plaintiff in it.
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The Whole Act: Zacchini and the Supreme Court's Only Right-of-Publicity Ruling
When a TV station aired a human cannonball's entire fifteen-second performance, the Supreme Court held the First Amendment does not immunize broadcasting a performer's complete act.
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"Here's Johnny" on a Portable Toilet: Carson and the Catchphrase as Identity
The Sixth Circuit held that a celebrity's signature catchphrase can be appropriated even when his name and likeness are never used.
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Factors Etc. v. Pro Arts: When an Exclusive Elvis License Outlived the Right It Licensed
The Second Circuit first upheld, then withdrew, an exclusive licensee's power to enforce Elvis Presley's posthumous identity — a whiplash that exposed how fragile a celebrity-estate license is when the underlying right depends on an unsettled state law.
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Dracula Dies With the Actor: Lugosi v. Universal and the Birth of the Descendibility Debate
How the California Supreme Court held in 1979 that the right of publicity is personal, dies with its owner, and is not descendible to heirs—prompting the statute that overturned it.