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Apple Forces Steve Jobs Action Figure Off eBay
Hugh Pickens writes "Kevin Parrish writes in Tom's Guide that last month, just in time for Christmas holiday gift-giving, M.I.C. Gadget began the manufacture and sale of a Steve Jobs action figure featuring an oversized head, Steve's trademark black shirt/blue jeans outfit, and a new iPhone 4 like a magical world-saving talisman in Jobs' left hand. The action figure, selling for $79.90, came with an Apple logo stand and cartoon balloons for writing custom messages. Soon a warning letter from Apple stated that the figurine violated a California statute prohibiting the use of a person's likeness in a product without prior authorization and sales ceased. But shortly after production stopped, the figurines began to appear on eBay selling for up to $2,500. Now Apple's lawyers have raided the online marketplace, zeroing in on one Canadian eBay seller who had already sold the figurine for $1,125 and eBay has removed other listings, telling sellers that the object for sale 'violates a celebrity's right of publicity.'"
Some of the comments on TFA are completely off the deep end, and I (foolishly) hope we don't end up with the same.
This a good thing. Personality rights like this evolve from the protection of privacy, and imply each individual's right to control their usage by the media. Usually those in elected positions forgo such rights, but for the rest of us it's nice to know that we can try to control some of the usage of ourselves as a commodity. In reality, this right translates almost only to celebrities, which unfairly causes a lot of the vilification of the laws; the fact of the matter is that only celebrities (by definition, perhaps) have their personality commoditized. A celebrity is a business, and just like a business they have the right to control the marketing of their brand.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
I'd have thought that it was the stand that was violating trademark law, not the outfit.
If one's likeness can be used to sell an item, including one's likeness, then one is a celebrity, i.e. a famous person.
Now, would you like someone else to make money off of a doll made in your image? Remember, you get none of the money and they did not ask your permission.
They can sue if they don't like your attitude. Whether they have much of a case is another matter, mind you, but...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The problem is that they've made a likeness which doesn't appear to differ from the original enough to qualify as satire, it uses his name and the Apple logo.
That last bit is probably what's going to cause most of the problem. The rest of it isn't as cut and dry as that is.