In Lugosi v. Universal Pictures, 603 P.2d 425 (Cal. 1979), the heirs of Béla Lugosi sued Universal Studios in 1966 for using his personality rights without the heirs' permission. The court ruled in favor of the Lugosi heirs, but Universal Studios won the case in an appeal to the California Supreme Court, where it was determined that a dead person had no right to his likeness, and any rights that existed did not pass to his heirs.
Read more about Lugosi V. Universal Pictures: History, Ruling, Aftermath
Famous quotes containing the words universal and/or pictures:
“Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)
“A higher class, in the estimation and love of this city- building, market-going race of mankind, are the poets, who, from the intellectual kingdom, feed the thought and imagination with ideas and pictures which raise men out of the world of corn and money, and console them for the short-comings of the day, and the meanness of labor and traffic.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)