Privacy, property and personality: civil law perspectives on commercial appropriation

The protection of privacy and personality is one of the most fascinating issues confronting any legal system. This book provides a detailed comparative analysis of the laws relating to commercial exploitation of personality in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. It examines the difficulties in reconciling privacy and personality with intellectual property rights in an individual's identity and in balancing such rights with the competing interests of freedom of expression and freedom of competition. This analysis will be useful for lawyers in legal systems which have yet to develop a sophisticated level of protection for interests in personality. Equally, lawyers in systems which provide a higher level of protection will benefit from the comparative insights into determining the nature and scope of intellectual property rights in personality, particularly questions relating to assignment, licensing, and post-mortem protection.
• Expert accounts of the law on commercial appropriation of personality in France, Germany and the major common law systems
• Detailed comparative analysis of the law of privacy and intellectual property rights relating to commercial appropriation of personality
• Critical appraisal of the difficulties in reconciling personality and intellectual property and balancing private property rights with freedom of expression