The Commercial Use Of The Natural Person’s Image

This article attempts to discuss how to give legal protection to the commercial interest ofone person’s image. With the rapid development of commodity economy, people, especially stars,celebrities have been increasingly use their images in commercial areas which have brought abouthuge material benefits, thus, it’s property value is much huger than the spirit interests of that.Personal rights and Property are protected with different theories in the context of the traditionalcivil law. It’s difficult to give appropriate protections to.the property interests in the behind ofpersonal images via Personality rights Law as well as with the Property Law. Under huge waves ofcommercialization, the protections of commercial value of images are in badly needed. Such legalinterests should be protected by law, so this discussion about how to protect the commercial valueof one person’s image is meaningful.The structure of this article will be demonstrated as follows,The introduction of this article details the binary system of the traditional civil law and thedilemma it faces in practice pointing out that it is necessary to protect the interests of oneperson’s image. It also elaborates the theory research status of domestic and foreign. What’s more,it points out that this article will focus on the commercial use of the personal images whileexplaining and unifying related terms.Part1illustrates the theoretic basis for the protections of personal images. Since the externalones have been dentally specified and analyzed here, this part holds that the theory of Kant’s rightto decide shall be the perfect theoretic basis for the protections of personal images, and thespecific reasons will be demonstrated in depth.Part2brings forth the present protections of personal images in domestic practices whichhave been done by means of personality rights, trademark law and the anti-unfair competition law,this article separately elaborates and reviews the ways and means of protection.Part3, illustrates the legislative status in the United States, Germany, Japan, the UnitedKingdom, and Australia with comparative law perspective, as the protection modes of the UnitedStates and Germany are two typical ways to solve the problem, this article details the twoprotection modes, and briefly explains the approaches of Japan, the United Kingdom, andAustralia.Part4, focus on an in-depth comparison between the legislation and protection modes of theUnited States and Germany, on purpose of finding the common core behind the differences, andattaining some inspiration in solving such problems in our country. The United States establishedright of publicity to address this issue, while Germany seek a breakthrough in the traditional lawof personality rights, and there is a common substance in the two approaches, that is looking forsome certain right to meet the freedom of use their personality characteristics, which is whatKant’s theory of right to decide support for. In my opinion, these two specific methods to solve theproblem are not suitable for legal practice in our country, but the common core behind the twoapproaches is worth of our reference.Part5lays out the solutions. The perfect way stands on constructing a new right systemwhich bases on the Kant’s theory of right, and it will decide and provide a targeted protectionthereafter. Unfortunately, it’s not a right time for the legislation, which makes us resort to, theother choice that by improving traditional civil law system for current cases. And as the casesconstantly cumulated, a new rights system will gradually established in the future. This article fatherly considers that a completely-constructed new right system is not an easyjob since there is a gap between the theory and practice of civil law. However, it’s a lawyer’s holymission to attempt to guide practice and theory construction as an academic article, that is also thereason why I stick to finishing the article and giving a legislative outlook on this issue.