Discussion On Design Of Right Of Publicity System

With rapid development of economy and innovation of mass media, there are more and more commercial advertising of goods and services using persona of celebrities, which comes along with disputes involving possible infringement of celebrities’right of publicity. As there is no right of publicity in China, such cases can only be solved under the Laws of Personality, Intellectual Property, Anti-injustice Competition. However, this kind of protection mode is full of disadvantage. The America’s right of publicity has been over 60 years since the day it was born and has been playing an important role in protecting obligees. Thus, the author suggests we should build right of publicity legal system based on foreign countries’experiences and our own situation.The thesis consists of four parts besides preface and conclusion. The first part defines right of publicity from America, Japan, WTPO and China. In the meantime, the author discriminate right of publicity from right of portraiture, right of goodwill and right of personality in this chapter as well. And the author considers right of publicity is a right that intitles a person to use his or her identical persona which contains commercial value. What differentiates the author from other scholars is that she thinks right of publicity only includes portraits of persons’ not including images of fictional characters or images of legal persons.The second part discusses four different theories about the nature of right of publicity, which are theory of intellectual property, theory of commercial personality, theory of personality and theory of intangible property. The author thinks right of publicity is intangible property in its nature.The third part describes legal system of right of publicity in America, particularly in California, and Japan. The author also analyzes status quo and flaws of legal protection about right of publicity in China.The last part trys to clarify what content legal system of right of publicity should contain. Since the study of right of publicity legal system is in the initial phase, the establishment of legal system of right of publicity should be steady and strictly legislated in combination with Chinese situation. The author advises how to establish the system from subject, object, content, limitations and items of infringement and remedies specifically.