Perspectives on International Image Rights over the Past Twenty Years

Abstract

Abstract Image rights enable individuals to stop the unauthorized use of their publicly identifiable attributes, typically their name, likeness, voice, or other personal indicia (in sum, their ‘image’). Unlike widely recognized intellectual property rights like copyright, patents, and trade marks, image rights have developed in a piecemeal, organic fashion, with differences in their nature and scope in various jurisdictions. Nonetheless, we conclude from an evaluation of approaches in the US, Europe, China, and the UK that image rights protection is on a growth trajectory, having undergone an overall expansion in the past twenty years, especially with the advent of the digital era. Turning to the present and future of image rights, we discuss emerging applications of image rights in the context of deepfakes, influencer marketing, digital avatars, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Additionally, online platform guidelines and actions are coalescing into de facto protection of an individual’s persona in an increasingly borderless, digital world. In such an environment, the interrelationships between a person’s autonomy, dignity, privacy, and economic aspects of reputation will require a more joined-up approach which is starting to emerge. We discuss this harmonizing trend as well as the current practical difficulties in enforcing image rights online, and suggest some solutions to these issues.