Right of Publicity

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Intellectual Property and TechnologyRight of Publicity

Right of publicity protects the commercial value of your name, image, likeness, and voice. We help talent and estates license and enforce those rights, and help brands use them without getting sued.

Your name, image, likeness, and voice carry commercial value, and the right of publicity is what lets you control how others cash in on them. That value is only getting more contested as AI-generated likenesses and synthetic voices spread. We represent both sides of these matters: the people and estates whose identity is the asset, and the brands that want to use someone's persona the right way.

Representing Talent and Estates

We work with performers, athletes, influencers, and the estates that manage a public figure's legacy to protect and monetize personality rights. That means structuring endorsement and licensing deals on favorable terms, shutting down unauthorized uses of name, image, likeness, and voice, and managing postmortem rights under the patchwork of state laws that govern how long those rights survive and who controls them.

Counseling Brands and Advertisers

Using a real person in a campaign without proper clearance is a fast way to draw a lawsuit. We advise brands and agencies on clearing names, faces, and voices before launch, negotiate endorsement and talent agreements that spell out the scope of the grant, and review marketing and AI-generated content for publicity, trademark, and false-endorsement risk so your campaign ships clean.

Publicity Rights Litigation

When someone uses your identity without permission, or when a brand is wrongly accused of doing so, we litigate. We bring and defend right of publicity claims in state and federal court, pursuing or contesting injunctions, damages, and disgorgement of profits. We pair those claims with related trademark, Lanham Act false-endorsement, and contract theories where they strengthen your position.

Frequently asked questions

Depending on the state, you can protect your name, image, likeness, voice, signature, and other recognizable traits from unauthorized commercial use. The scope varies quite a bit from state to state, so the same use can be fine in one place and actionable in another.

The rights exist throughout your life. After death, it depends entirely on the state: some offer no posthumous protection at all, while others extend it for decades (in some cases up to 100 years). Because of that variation, posthumous publicity rights are worth addressing directly in estate planning.

Yes. Commercial use of a person's image generally requires their consent, and that's true for ordinary people, not just celebrities. Get a signed release before you use it. Relying on "they probably won't mind" is how brands end up defending a publicity claim.

The right of publicity protects the commercial value of your identity: your right to control and profit from commercial use of your name and likeness. Privacy rights are about being left alone, protecting you from unwanted intrusion and disclosure. One is about money, the other about being undisturbed.

Generally yes. Newsworthy and editorial uses are protected by the First Amendment, so reporting on or commenting about a public figure is usually fine. The hard part is the line between editorial and commercial use; the same image in an article is treated very differently than the same image used to sell a product.

An AI-generated likeness or voice clone of a real person likely implicates their right of publicity, just like any other unauthorized use. Several states have started passing laws aimed specifically at these technologies. Until the rules settle, the safe approach is to treat an AI-generated likeness the same as using the real person's likeness: get consent.

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