Cambridge Intellectual Property and Information Law: Series Number 4: The Commercial Appropriation of Personality

Commercial exploitation of attributes of an individual's personality, such as name, voice and likeness, forms a mainstay of modern advertising and marketing. Such indicia also represent an important aspect of an individual's dignity which is often offended by unauthorized commercial appropriation. This volume provides a framework for analysing the disparate aspects of the problem of commercial appropriation of personality and traces, in detail, the discrete patterns of development in the major common law systems. It also considers whether a coherent justification for a remedy may be identified from a range of competing theories. The considerable variation in substantive legal protection reflects more fundamental differences in the law's responsiveness to commercial practices and different attitudes towards the proper scope and limits of intangible property rights.

Preface; Table of cases; Table of statutes; Part I. A Framework: 1. The problem of appropriation of personality; Part II. Economic Interests and the Law of Unfair Competition: 2. Introduction; 3. Statutory and extra-legal remedies; 4. Goodwill in personality: the tort of passing off in English and Australian law; 5. Unfair competition and the doctrine of misappropriation; Part III. Dignitary Interests: 6. Introduction; 7. Privacy and publicity in the United States; 8. Privacy interests in English law; 9. Interests in reputation; Part IV. Pervasive Problems: 10. Property in personality; 11. Justifying a remedy for appropriation of personality; Part V. Conclusions: 12. The autonomy of appropriation of personality; Bibliography; Index.