INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

Intellectual Property Law

Intellectual Property Law: Privacy and Celebrity

Introduction

Celebrity has received substantial recent attention within cultural and media studies. As well as textual approaches, commentators have considered contemporary production and consumption practices surrounding celebrity. Three themes from that research are outlined in this article. They concern connections that exist between the media and promotional industries; the aims of promotion for control over media content and its utilisation of selected material from celebrities' private life to that end; and the changing audience uses of media content away from information and toward identity formation. In light of such research, this report examines a recent legal claim by celebrities who were seeking privacy from particular media coverage. The illustrative legal dispute used here is the suit by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas about magazine coverage of their wedding and reception.along with other cases like kaye v Robertson[1991], Venables v News Group Newspapers[2001], Gary Flitcroft v MGN[2002], Douglas v Hello!Ltd[2005], Campbell v Mirror Group Newspapers[2004]

Discussion

The 2005 English Court of Appeal decision in Douglas is notable for its endorsement of legal protection for what can be called the 'celebrity commodity'. The decision illustrates a different dimension within commonwealth approaches to privacy from those prominent in other notable celebrity cases. In a number of recent privacy decisions, celebrities are constructed predominantly as passive objects of media attention. This can be seen in Naomi Campbell's claim over newspaper coverage of her attending a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, in the New Zealand decision of Hosking v Runting6 — involving a celebrity newsreader, his then partner and their child — and in Princess Caroline's dispute over media coverage in the European Court of Human Rights. Of course, the judgments contain important references to the parties' public activities; for example, Naomi Campbell's false public denials of drug use meant the media legally could publish some — but not all — of the information about her seeking treatment for drug addiction(Barnett 2002 pp.89). In addition, in other preliminary decisions involving celebrity claimants, their actions in courting the media or acting as role models for members of the public have received judicial comment. Given the particular facts involved, however, decisions like Campbell, Hosking and Von Hannover do not discuss connections between the publicity and media industries in any detail. Nor do they examine the creation of celebrity content through a complex interplay of celebrities, intermediaries and the media. These elements of celebrity appear with greater recognition in the 2005 Douglas decision. And the issues they illustrate can be expected to raise legal interest in England, Australia and New Zealand, as well as academic interest more widely(Lindsay 2005 pp.112-119).

Commercial exploitation of aspects of personality does not fit easily into the established categories of tort law or property law. First, all legal systems analysed in the ensuing chapters protect a person's reputation against defamation and, in certain circumstances, the unauthorised use of a person's name or portrait can cause damage to his reputation and standing in public. This will not usually be the case and while there may be borderline cases such as the unauthorised use of a famous singer's name in an advertisement for false teeth, advertisements tend to show celebrities in a ...