Los Angeles – Century City associate Arsen Kourinian wrote a Feb. 28 Law360 article on a growing trend of courts to characterize certain right-of-publicity claims as intellectual property infringement and the significance of this characterization on right-of-publicity remedies.
The article, titled “Limiting Remedies on Celebrity Right-of-Publicity Claims,” addresses why celebrities should not be permitted to seek emotional distress damages when bringing right-of-publicity claims arising from a licensee’s use of the celebrity’s image past the term of a license agreement, but in the same manner to which the celebrity previously consented.
Kourinian explains that based on the historical development of right-of-publicity law, fundamental principles underlying tort and contract law, and for policy reasons, celebrities cannot and should not recover emotional distress damages under certain right-of-publicity claims.