Among the major liabilities pertaining the Public Relations industry, we find that privacy laws have been continuously arising lawsuits and affecting the industry directly. Privacy laws vary from state to state and are encompassed in a grey area where the boundary between First Amendment protected speech and commercial speech is yet to be delineated. According to Don Pember (2008), author of Mass Media Law, there are four areas of privacy law: appropriation of name or likeness for commercial purposes, intrusion, publication of private information and publication of material that puts an individual in false light. For this particular discussion, I’ll focus on the first category, appropriation of someone’s name or likeness for commercial gain without permission.
It’s important to know that the appropriation tort is divided into two categories: the right to privacy and the right of publicity. The major difference between each other is that the “right to privacy protects an individual from the emotional damage that can occur when a name or likeness is used for a commercial or trade purpose” (Pember, 2008, p. 281), while the right of publicity intends to “remunerate individuals for the economic harm suffered when their name, picture, image, likeness, voice, etc. for commercial exploitation without compensation” (Pember, 2008, p. 281). Although it’s more common to see celebrities take legal action against companies claiming their right of publicity, average individuals can use these legal causes of action as well.
