Cameo Clips

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that California right of publicity and federal Lanham Act claims didn't apply to the British release of Brian Wilson's Good Vibrations CD, which featured Beach Boys photographs. Love v. Sanctuary Records Group Ltd., 07-56008. Good Vibrations was distributed as a promotional mailer in England and Ireland in about 2.6 million copies of the newspaper Mail on Sunday. Mike Love, a Beach Boys founding member, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against a number of parties over the CD release. The district court dismissed Love's claims. Love settled with many of the defendants but appealed some issues in the case.

Affirming the dismissal, the Ninth Circuit noted, as to Love's right of publicity claim, that he was a resident of Nevada, not California. But the court added: “Even if California has an interest in protecting the right of an entertainer with economic ties to the state to exploit his image overseas, that interest is not nearly as significant as England's interest [in promoting unregulated competition in the commercial exploitation of name and likenesses and thus] in (not) regulating the distribution of millions of copies of a newspaper and millions of compact discs by a British paper primarily in the United Kingdom.” (Britain doesn't recognize a right of publicity but does protect against trademark infringement and “passing off.”)