Celebrity characatures

Hi


Is it legal to draw characatures of celebritites and then sell them?

fun reading ... if you can't be bothered to dig through that then no, and/or call an attorney.

Hmm. Very interesting. It seems quite clear that if you don't own the copyright to a likeness you can be sued under the right of publicity.

The case mentioned is interesting in that it pits the right of publicity (a state level right) against the copyright (a Federal law) holders rights. It is just an appeals case that says the plaintiffs have a legitimate claim and that they should have their day in court. It doesn't actually say whether they win or not. The people being sued actually have a license from the copyright holder to the characters they are using. But in this follow up decision (WENDT v HOST INTERNATIONAL) it seems like the actors won on their right of publicity and the studio that owns the copyright lost. It's unclear if the reason they lost is because the character names used for the animatronic robots were "Bob" and "Hank" instead of "Norm" and "Cliff." I wonder if the defendants would have won if they used "Norm" and "Cliff." The dissenting opinion notes that the decision in favor of the right of publicity here is in conflict with another decision in favor of the copyright holder (Baltimore Orioles v. Major League Baseball Players). Since both decisions were made by the Federal court system and seem to be in conflict with each other, it seems like a resolution may need to be made by the Supreme Court.