Putting a Face to the Game: The Intellectual Property Implications of Using Celebrity Likenesses in Videogames

Licensing deals between videogame developers and celebrities for the use of the latter’s likenesses in the former’s products are becoming increasingly commonplace. These are activities that would be governed by the law relating to the ‘right of publicity’ in the US and by the law relating to the ‘right of personality’ in various continental European jurisdictions. However, no equivalent legal framework exists in the UK.

This article considers the extent to which the relevant intellectual property frameworks in the UK prohibit or permit the unauthorised use of celebrity likenesses in videogames, in particular copyright law, the law of passing off, and trade mark law.

The article concludes that, given recent developments within the law of passing off and the law of trade mark, it may no longer be untenable to suggest that such uses could be caught by these two legal regimes. In doing so, it also highlights how far the ambit of these two regimes has expanded in recent decades.