The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a video game company had to defend its use of names, images and likeness of college athletes without compensation in producing NCAA football video games. In its decision the Ninth Circuit rejected the company’s First Amendment defense. (ThinkProgress, August 2, 2013, by Travis Waldron)
The Electronic Freedom Foundation’s Daniel Nazer, July 31, 2013 argued that the ruling threatened to shut down creation of biographies and documentaries realistically depicting famous people. Nazer quotes the dissenting judge, “The logical consequence of the majority view is that all realistic depictions of actual persons, no matter how incidental, are protected by a state law right of publicity regardless of the creative context. This logic jeopardizes the creative use of historic figures in motion pictures, books, and sound recordings.”