Name, image, likeness, and voice — the state-law right of publicity at the frontier of generative artificial intelligence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How California's appellate court used the First Amendment to dismiss Olivia de Havilland's publicity and false-light suit over the 'Feud' docudrama.
The Ninth Circuit held that a game-show robot could appropriate Vanna White's identity, untethering the right of publicity from name and likeness.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Ninth Circuit held that a celebrity's discarded birth name remains part of his identity, reviving claims over an Oldsmobile commercial.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Ninth Circuit let two Cheers actors take their right-of-publicity claim to trial over airport-bar robots evoking their characters.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Sixth Circuit held that a celebrity's signature catchphrase can be appropriated even when his name and likeness are never used.
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.
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.
