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Fame: Ownership Implications of Intellectual Property and Agency Law
Max Stul Oppenheimer
Article

  The full text of this Article may be found here.

30 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 447 (2020).

Article by Max Stul Oppenheimer*

 

ABSTRACT

[I]

n the pre-internet era, it was difficult to reach a wide audience without the help of a professional organization, so as a practical matter control typically rested with distributors rather than with talent. Now that direct public distribution is easy and inexpensive, distributors’ practical control has greatly diminished, and it is therefore important to consider the legal principles that govern the control of the use of “fame.” This Article defines fame as a bundle of intellectual property rights and analyzes the ownership of those rights under intellectual property and agency theories.

* B.S., cum laude, Princeton University; J.D., Harvard Law School; Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law; member, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The author would like to thank Louis Angelos, League Representative, Baltimore Orioles, for his comments on the manuscript, Rebecca Oppenheimer of Andalman and Flynn for her suggestions on the entertainment sections and for lending her encyclopedic knowledge of movies, and Hayley Hassan, UB ‘19 and Julia Anne McKeachie, UB ‘20 for their extraordinary research assistance. The views expressed are the author’s own.