zlacker

Doesn't matter. Waits v Frito Lay

>>jonath+(OP)
Which is not as similar as people keep saying though: both that case, and Bette Midler's involved singers, who perform as themselves and are their own brand.

Consider when a company recasts a voice actor in something: i.e. the VA Rick and Morty have been replaced, Robin Williams was not the voice of genie in Aladdin 2 or the animated series.

>>XorNot+v4
Recasting a voice actor when there was a contract with the prior actor (and such a contract would typically allow for recasting) is one thing.

Copying a famous actor’s voice without any kind of agreement at all is something else.

>>jonath+(OP)
That's an impersonation of a parody song in his style. This is a voice actor who has a voice that's kinda similar to ScarJo and kinda similar to Rashida Jones but not quite either one doing something different.

Cases are not a spell you can cast to win arguments, especially when the facts are substantially different.

>>Mattic+NO
In both cases the companies are specifically trading on creating confusion of a celebrity’s likeness in an act that celebrity trades in, and with the motivation of circumventing that very celebrity’s explicit rejection of the offer for that very work.

Just because one is a singer and the other is an actor isn’t the big difference you think it is. Actors do voice over work all the time. Actors in fact get cast for their voice all the time.

Yelling, “Parody!” Isn’t some get out of jail free card, particularly where there is actual case law, even more particularly when there are actual laws to address this very act.

>>jonath+WR
> In both cases the companies are specifically trading on creating confusion of a celebrity’s likeness in an act that celebrity trades in, and with the motivation of circumventing that very celebrity’s explicit rejection of the offer for that very work.

Are they? Where did they advertise this? The voice doesn't even sound that much like ScarJo!

> Just because one is a singer and the other is an actor isn’t the big difference you think it is. Actors do voice over work all the time. Actors in fact get cast for their voice all the time.

It's a very big difference when the jurisprudence here rests on how substantial the voice is as a proportion of the brand, especially in the presence of the other disanalogies.

> Yelling, “Parody!” Isn’t some get out of jail free card, particularly where there is actual case law, even more particularly when there are actual laws to address this very act.

Sure -- If you read that back, I'm clearly not doing that. An impression in a parody in the artist's unique style (Waits) was a case where it was a violation of publicity rights. This is radically different from that. It's not clear that Midler and Waits have much bearing on this case at all.