Research On The Right Of Publicity

"The right of publicity", firstly enacted in USA, is originated from the right of privacy. In China it is still a newborn concept for the phenomenon of commercialization is unfamiliar to the public due to the influence of planned economy system, and Chinese scholars have not started research on the right of publicity until 1980's. How to protect the value of image economy has not been caused popular attention of scholars in China yet. Research achievement, therefore, has rarely done. With the rapid development of economy, more and more disputes involving the commercialization of the famous image spring up, and it has become a hot issue nowadays. However, the right of publicity is a should-be right in China, and it is not a legal concept but a theoretical concept. To some extent, the traditional Civil Law, the Copyright Law, the Trademark Law and the Anti-Unfair Competition Law can resolve such issue mentioned above. Nevertheless, both the present personality right system and property right system have lots of difficulties, and their functions are limited because of the restriction of themselves. This paper takes the right of publicity in American Intellectual Property Law as a blueprint, and discusses the right of publicity on its many aspects, such as its definition, nature, features, subject, protective object and suggestions on legislation system, etc, in order to promote the legal protection of the real person's image interests.