Dignitary Rights and the benefits of Registered Personality

How would you feel if you were an actor whose performance had been hi-jacked for a film you didn’t approve of and which resulted in you receiving death-threats? That’s exactly the position that Cindy Lee Garcia found herself in after working on a film she thought was entitled ‘Desert Warrior’, but which actually turned out to be the highly controversial film ‘Innocence of Muslims’. Cindy Lee Garcia, was hired to perform 4 pages of script over 3 days in an action film entitled Desert Warrior. She was not told of the film’s true nature nor given a copy of the full film script. Her lines were later dubbed so that she appeared to ask whether Mohammed was a child molester. Needless to say, when the film came out she received death threats from Muslim extremists. She further claimed that she never signed the contract presented in court and demonstrated that her signature had been forged. As such, her contract was held to be void due to fraud. Click here to learn more.

The question is how would this case been settled in Guernsey if the actor had a properly registered image right?

Had the actor in question had a registered image right, then they could have sued for infringement of that right because according to s68 of the Image Rights Ordinance, a personnage whose personality has been registered has the right not to have protected images associated with or registered against that registered personality subjected to derogatory treatment. (For further information see, http://ipo.guernseyregistry.com/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=79062&p=0)

This note is only intended to give a brief summary and general overview of this area of law. It is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, legal advice and should not be relied upon as doing so.

Dr Angela Adrian, BBA, MIM, JD, LLM, PhD

Angela is a dual-qualified lawyer (US Attorney and English Solicitor). She is a leading authority on Intellectual Property and is the editor of the International Journal of Intellectual Property Management. Angela is respected academic, having published numerous papers and books and having taught IP at several international universities.

Icondia comprises a team of experts that focus exclusively on the registration and management of image rights for an international customer base.
For further information visit www.icondia.com.

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