Noel Cruz repaints dolls
to make them look more like their models (that is, more like the actors as they
looked when they played the relevant characters, or more like the celebrities).
The results are often
uncanny.
Apparently there is an entire “repainting”
community.
The first sale issues, both
in terms of copyright and in terms of trademark, are quite intriguing—and I don’t
recall that any right of publicity case has addressed first sale at all.
(For copyright, I’d argue that to the extent
that Cruz makes the dolls resemble the relevant actors more, he is not changing
anything a copyright owner could own, as the appearance of a real human being
isn’t part of the protectable expression in a TV show or movie—but there is
loose language in cases like
X One X
that could be read otherwise.
But if
X One X is right—if MGM owns a copyright
in Dorothy-who-looks-like-Judy-Garland—then that has interesting implications
for §301 preemption, since courts in right of publicity cases usually hold to
the contrary.)
Examples from people/characters involved in litigated right of publicity, copyright, and trademark cases:
Side note of possible interest to
Vampire Diaries fans—he did a
great job on
Stefan, but clearly understood that his Damon was subpar and has no closeup
pictures of the less broody Salvatore.
That might be due to the
underlying doll’s failure to replicate the actor’s distinctive facial structure,
since I imagine there’s only so much repainting can do.
(If anything, that doll looks more like
Joshua Jackson to me.)
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