Right of Publicity Roundup

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington decided that 2008 amendments to the Washington Personality Rights Act (WPRA) ' that allowed for application of the right-of-publicity statute “regardless of place of domicile or place of domicile at time of death” of an individual ' violate the due process and full faith and credit clauses of the federal constitution. Experience Hendrix L.L.C. v. HendrixLicensing.com Ltd., C09-285Z.

District Judge Thomas S. Zilly noted: “Not only is Washington's choice-of-law directive at odds with the almost unanimous views of courts that have grappled with the survivability of the right of publicity, it also runs contrary to the traditional approach for resolving the testamentary or intestate disposition of personal property. ' The domicile has the requisite contacts with a particular individual or personality to generate a state interest in defining his or her property rights and how they may be transferred. To select, as the WPRA suggests, the law of a state to which the individual or personality is a stranger, constitutes no less random an act than blindly throwing darts at a map on the wall.” (See, RCW 63.60.010, RCW 63.60.020 and RCW 63.60.030.)