Protecting Your Image

Owning, defending, and controlling the value in your name and face

Your image is an asset, and for a well-known athlete it may be the most valuable asset you will ever own. It is also the one you are least likely to have protected, because nobody handed you a deed to your own face and told you to guard it. The law gives you real, enforceable rights in your name, likeness, and identity, and real remedies when someone misuses them, but those rights protect the athlete who understands and asserts them. This guide maps the terrain: the right of publicity, the defamation rules, the copyright trap that means you may not own photos of your own face, the online problems, the rights that survive your death, and the proactive strategy that ties it together.

“The law arms you. It waits for you to act.”

Brandon Leopoldus, Esq.