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Posted By: Max Weder

Jon

Athletes have been more vigilent in protecting their intellectual property rights to publicity. In some states, these extend to 75 years beyond the person's death.

These rights obviously come into contrast with First Amendment Rights. The Three Stooges decision is a leading California case about balancing these rights. The art producing Larry, Curly and Moe was fine, until it was used to hawk T-shirts, and obviously not based on the merits of the artwork, but on the likeness to the three. Tiger Woods also attempted to sue an artist who produced a series of lithographs without his authorization. Here is some commentary:

http://www.rcfp.org/news/mag/25-3/lib-intellec.html

I don't know whether the case has gone beyond the US Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit decision in 2003 in which Tiger lost. (Perhaps it wasn't marriage, but this decision that sent him into a funk ) Here's the text of the decision for those interested:

http://pacer.ca6.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=03a0207p.06

And for anyone interested, I can offer some off-forum tales of dealing with the estate of Babe Ruth.

Max