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.
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.
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 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.
