Publicity rights and celebrity

Publicity rights protect the commercial value of one’s persona from unauthorized appropriations. By broadly construing the scope of one’s persona, removing restraints on the right’s alienability, and extending the right’s availability past death, courts and legislators expanded the ability of the famous, including famous authors, to control outside uses of their public image. Legal academics often question the theoretical grounding of publicity rights, but there is little doubt that such rights influence the construction of meaning in the minds of audiences.