What's in a Name?
Overlapping Trademark, Publicity and Copyright Laws Involving a Person's Identity
A well-known fashion designer sells the business that bears his name — including the associated trademark rights — for a lucrative sum. How, if at all, may he later use his name or appear in public to publicize his involvement with a new venture? A young designer’s employer requires her to transfer trademark rights in her name as a condition of employment. Post-separation, can her employer force her to remove social media posts promoting her work and turn over social media handles under her name? If a musical artist forms a company to hold and license out trademark rights in her identity, can control of the company — and the ability to authorize others to use her identity for commercial purposes — be transferred through a bankruptcy or divorce settlement, and if so, what are the implications for her next album? And what is the role of publicity rights in the analysis, particularly the elements rooted in a person’s control and dignity rights, and are those rights even cognizable if they aren't held by the individual?
Join Professor Jennifer Rothman, America’s preeminent publicity rights scholar and a leading expert in trademark and copyright law, in sorting out the fragmentary and overlapping IP-related rights in a person’s identity, and the real-life implications for artists, artisans and influencers. Professor Rothman posits that trademark law's ancient personality-based roots can help lead us through this "identify thicket” in ways that are both surprising and illuminating.
Jennifer E. Rothman is the Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a secondary appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication. She is nationally recognized for her scholarship in the field of intellectual property law and as the leading expert on the right of publicity. Rothman’s work focuses on conflicts between intellectual property rights and other constitutionally-protected rights, such as the freedom of speech. Her current research focuses on the ways intellectual property law is employed to turn people into a form of property, as well as how it regulates the production and content of expression. Her book, The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World, published by Harvard University Press, addresses some of these concerns. Rothman’s is the author of numerous essays and articles that regularly appear in top law reviews and journals. Her most recent article, Navigating the Identity Thicket: Trademark’s Lost Theory of Personality, the Right of Publicity, and Preemption was published in the Harvard Law Review.
