Ray D. Madoff: The New Grave Robbers
[Ray D. Madoff, a professor at Boston College Law School, is the author of “Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead.”]
CAN a wild wig and a bushy mustache be packaged and called an Albert Einstein costume? According to Hebrew University of Jerusalem and its American marketing agent, the answer is no — at least not without permission. The university says that when it inherited Einstein’s estate, the bequest included ownership of Einstein’s very identity, giving it exclusive legal control over who could use Einstein’s name and image, and at what cost.
Einstein is not the only example. While we might think of people like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., George Patton, Rosa Parks, Frank Lloyd Wright and Babe Ruth as part of our cultural heritage, available for all to use, the identities of each of them, and thousands more, are claimed as private property, usable only with permission and for a fee.
This phenomenon is fairly recent — and it’s getting out of control. For most of this country’s history, a person’s identity was not something that could be owned. While the unauthorized use of someone’s name or image was sometimes barred as an invasion of privacy, the right belonged to that person alone and could not be assigned to others. It was not until 1953, in a case involving baseball players licensing their images for use on baseball cards, that American law first constructed identity as a property interest that could be sold or licensed. This interest became known as the right of publicity....
Read entire article at NYT
CAN a wild wig and a bushy mustache be packaged and called an Albert Einstein costume? According to Hebrew University of Jerusalem and its American marketing agent, the answer is no — at least not without permission. The university says that when it inherited Einstein’s estate, the bequest included ownership of Einstein’s very identity, giving it exclusive legal control over who could use Einstein’s name and image, and at what cost.
Einstein is not the only example. While we might think of people like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., George Patton, Rosa Parks, Frank Lloyd Wright and Babe Ruth as part of our cultural heritage, available for all to use, the identities of each of them, and thousands more, are claimed as private property, usable only with permission and for a fee.
This phenomenon is fairly recent — and it’s getting out of control. For most of this country’s history, a person’s identity was not something that could be owned. While the unauthorized use of someone’s name or image was sometimes barred as an invasion of privacy, the right belonged to that person alone and could not be assigned to others. It was not until 1953, in a case involving baseball players licensing their images for use on baseball cards, that American law first constructed identity as a property interest that could be sold or licensed. This interest became known as the right of publicity....