Stanford Center for Internet and Society

I simply could not resist sharing this one, for those who don’t check IPKat regularly. Apparently, transformativeness is not only a big deal in copyright fair use law, but also in tort claims for misappropriation of celebrities’ name and likeness (aka the right of publicity).

In the copyright context, at least, the underlying work – i.e., the work that is being sufficiently transformed (or not) by the defendant - must be original in the first place in order to give rise to a legal action. Would Paris Hilton’s pitch “That’s hot” qualify? Obviously not. But when Paris says “That’s hot” – then, folks, we have some heavyweight first amendment issues coming our way…