It is a decision one imagines the legendary Hollywood star might well have embraced: Marilyn Monroe, according to a new legal ruling, belongs to everybody.
A US federal court said on Thursday that Monroe’s estate was wrong to pursue photograph libraries and other organizations that use her image without permission or payment on T-shirts and other memorabilia. It all stems from a decision made almost half a century ago by the Some Like It Hot star’s legal representatives in the wake of her 1962 death. Faced with a huge tax bill from the Californian authorities if they registered her final abode in the state, they chose to list the actor’s official domicile as New York, where Monroe had a second home, because the latter did not charge estate taxes.
However, a move that saved Monroe’s heirs millions of dollars at the time could now end up costing them far more.
Photo: AFP
New York does not share California’s generous laws regarding control of dead celebrities’ images, and last week’s hearing ruled in favor of those who believe the actor’s estate has, for decades, been wrongly extracting a fee each time Monroe’s image is used.
The issue came to light when the estate took a number of photograph libraries to court in the middle of the last decade for selling her image without permission. Several courts, noting that Monroe’s official final abode was New York, opted to abide by that state’s statutes and threw out the cases. The legal battle continued up until last week’s decision by the federal ninth circuit court of appeals, despite efforts by the state of California at one point to retrospectively award rights to the estate via a change in the law. That position now appears to have been reversed.
“This is a textbook case for applying judicial estoppel,” Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote in her ruling on Thursday. “Monroe’s representatives took one position on Monroe’s domicile at death for 40 years, and then changed their position when it was to their great financial advantage, an advantage they secured years after Monroe’s death by convincing the California legislature to create rights that did not exist when Monroe died. Marilyn Monroe is often quoted as saying: ‘If you’re going to be two-faced, at least make one of them pretty.’”
In a footnote to its ruling, the court said that Monroe once foresaw the battle over rights to her image and its outcome.
“We observe that the lengthy dispute over the exploitation of Marilyn Monroe’s persona has ended in exactly the way that Monroe herself predicted more than 50 years ago,” the judgement reads. “’I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.’”
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Taiwanese prosecutors suspect that three people successfully smuggled at least one shipment of Nvidia Corp artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China after first exporting them to Japan, people familiar with the matter said. The trio was detained last week by the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office for allegedly falsifying documents related to exports of Super Micro Computer Inc servers containing advanced Nvidia chips, which the US has barred from sale to China without a license from Washington. The move marked Taiwan’s first public crackdown on AI chip diversion after years of pressure from the US to take a more active role in curtailing
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) employee bonuses are likely to grow more than 30 percent this year, in line with the past few years as the company’s profits continue to set new records, an anonymous source cited TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) as saying yesterday. TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is committed to taking care of its workers, the source said, citing Wei’s meeting with employees yesterday morning. Wei also expressed gratitude to employees for their contribution to the company’s improving bottom line, the source added. Since 2023, TSMC’s employee bonuses have grown at an annual rate of
RSS