Beverley-Smith Huw, Ohly Ansgar, Lucas-Schloetter Agnes. Privacy, Property and Personality: Civil Law Perspectives on Commercial Appropriation

Cambridge University Press, 2005. — 286 p.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. The discrete patterns of development in the major common law and civil law jurisdictions are outlined, together with an analysis of the basic models of protection.
The 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 that 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.
HUW BEVERLEY-SMITH is a Solicitor in the Brands, Technology, Media and Telecommunications Department at Field Fisher Waterhouse in London. He is also the author of The Commercial Appropriation of Personality (Cambridge 2002).
ANSGAR OHLY is Professor of Civil Law and Intellectual Property Law in the Faculty of Law and Economics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Until 2002 he was the head of the Commonwealth Department of the Max-Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, Munich.
AGNES LUCAS-SCHLOETTER is Lecturer in French law at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. Until 2003 she was a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, Munich.