Publicity rights

[Aaron Gerow]

In a court decision which may add a little fodder to film scholars' 
ammunition in the fight to print images from films in publications, a 
Tokyo court ruled that famous people do not have the right to restrict 
the distribution of information about them. In a case where several 
tarento like Ito Misaki sued the magazine Bubka over the publication of 
photos of those talento, the court only ruled in favor of the 
plaintiffs with regard to mistaken information (e.g., a naked photo 
attributed to Ito when it was in fact someone else). The plaintiffs 
assertion of "publicity rights" over their own portraits was rejected.

Since I have had film companies assert that I couldn't even use frame 
grabs in a publication because I needed to clear those images with each 
of the actors shown, I could possibly use this court decision to 
counter that assertion.

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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