He sued, alleging that the artist, who put thousands of copies of his piece up for sale online, commercialized Woods’s image without permission or payment, violating what is known as the right of publicity.
#PORTRAIT PAINTER APP ANDROID TV#
It’s unlikely a Nike TV spot can successfully claim to be art-but what about a painting with limited edition prints sold through a website? When does that line get crossed? The Woods lawsuit raised an aspect of publicity rights litigation that courts often wrestle with: What is the line between art and commerce? It is an important question, given that art enjoys broader free speech protections than the latter.
Laws regarding the right of publicity vary from state to state, but generally they allow people to have commercial control over their persona and likeness.
The logic is simple enough: Only you should get to profit from your image, and others shouldn’t be able to use it for economic gain without your permission. There are exceptions, notably instances in which the use of an image is in the public interest, such as in a newspaper. The limits to publicity rights have been repeatedly tested by artists, who assert that constitutional free speech protections guaranteed under the First Amendment trump an individual’s right to control the use of her or his likeness by someone else. “And typically the First Amendment will prevail.” “You have the First Amendment colliding with a purely personal right,” said Christine Steiner, a California-based attorney who has written on this issue.
#PORTRAIT PAINTER APP ANDROID FULL#
In the case of Tiger Woods, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Rush, finding that his work depicted a historic event of cultural value (Woods winning the Masters) and did not “propose a commercial transaction.” Moreover, Rush had significantly transformed Woods’s likeness for his work, with the painting constituting “expression which is entitled to the full protection of the First Amendment.” Today, you can still buy a print online.īroadly, courts have favored artists in this and similar cases, as long as they refrain from mass-producing the image too widely on commercial goods. “There is a limited right to use someone’s likeness in a ‘fine art’ context, perhaps without their permission,” said Joshua J. Kaufman, head of Venable’s Copyright and Licensing group.
0 kommentar(er)
