Last year, a friend invited me to attend the Antiques Roadshow filming in Arkansas. I took one of my most prized possessions: a sealed copy of the Rolling Stone’s album Some Girls, with the original cover art. I was ready to nerd out about this on camera but (unsurprisingly) was not selected to film for the show. That just means I get the opportunity to share that story here!
Music fans will recognize Some Girls as the album that brought you hits like “Miss You” and “Beast of Burden,” but intellectual property attorneys will also note it for the controversy surrounding the original artwork. The original cover featured a collage of images of famous women (Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Judy Garland, and Raquel Welch), but the Stones unfortunately did not get permission from these famous women to use their name, image, or likeness in a commercial way. The women (or the women’s estates) brought and won a lawsuit against the Stones and later printings of the cover art feature brightly colored cutouts where the original faces appeared.
The Stones’ decision can serve as a reminder that you should never use the image of a celebrity without license, as use of someone else’s name, image, or likeness without their permission can result in a costly lawsuit. My visit to the Antiques Roadshow wasn’t a complete bust, as the appraiser shared with me the weirdest music memorabilia he’d ever seen: a bucket full of the cutout faces of the above-mentioned women after the lawsuit occurred. It seems that in an act of rock and roll revenge (or perhaps merely out of a waste not, want not mentality) the band decided to shoot these out of confetti cannons at concerts.
If you have any questions about copyright law, or name, image, or likeness appropriation, please schedule a consultation with Iconic Trademarks!
