THE COMMERCIAL APPROPRIATION OF FAME: A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE RIGHT OF PUBLICITY AND PASSING OFF

摘要

If the common law teaches that rights should not always flow from investment, the rise of "publicity rights" (sometimes described as "personality rights") suggests that the lesson is not always heeded. Intellectual property scholarship typically disparages the legal doctrines that create and sustain markets for celebrity endorsements and associations, characterising them as offering society nothing of value in exchange and as perpetuating the fallacy of "if value, then rights". Yet the growing legal protections that wrap around celebrity fame indicate that, in this context at least, the fallacy is becoming legal orthodoxy.