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 unauthorised 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 new 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 new commercial practices and different attitudes towards the proper scope and limits of intangible property rights.* Analyses the disparate strands of the problem of commercial appropriation of personality which affects both intellectual property rights and personal dignity * Detailed critical analysis of the leading cases in English, Canadian and Australian law with comparative references to the United States * Explores the question whether attributes of personality can be protected alongside other intellectual property rights and whether there is a coherent justification for such a right