: Can I publish caricatures of famous people in a game? I am developing an indie 2D game. Some of the enemies are caricatures of famous characters but there is no explicit reference to their

@Eichhorn212

www.tomrichmond.com/blog/2006/08/15/caricature-and-the-right-of-publicity/
"The Right of Publicity (ROP) is an ever evolving aspect of law that allows someone to protect the commercial use of their image, voice and persona. This applies to both the use of a person’s image or persona in a product, or it’s use in promoting the sale of another product. In the multimedia world of today, the courts are increasingly recognizing that the image, voice and persona of a person, especially that of a celebrity, has value. Similar to a copyright on intellectual property, courts have shown increasing tendency to allow for the protection of that value through the ROP."

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@Moriarity648

A few years ago I worked on a game for a large corporation (5,000+ employees) which included several caricatures of famous politicians.

Our legal department validated it with the only proviso being to neither include any real names nor explicit references to individuals.

The company is UK based but the game was published online.

Whilst it's worth getting counsel for your particular case I thought my experience might provide you with some encouragement.

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@Caterina889

Consult an attorney.

No designer is going to know the answer to this question. All answers will merely be guesses.

You need to speak to someone familiar with legal-ease.

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@Ogunnowo857

Well since famous people are public figures and as long as you don´t insult them directly I think you should be fine... But this is a law thing, I´m not sure how far this fits in here :P I think it also depends on the laws of your country

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