Not much, according to White, that woman of letters. The longtime gameshow cubist is suing Samsung Electronics America and its ad agency because of a humorous print advertisement that she claims pirated her celebrity. Several years ago the company ran a VCR ad that depicted a robot with a blond wig, jewelry and alluring evening gown, turning giant letters on a video board. Clearly, the resemblance was to White, hostess of syndicated televisions “Wheel of Fortune.” (The robot had pretty eyes, but White has better skin.) The caption read: “Longest-running game show. 2012 A.D.” The gag was that Samsung products would still be around after a human hostess had been replaced.
White was not amused and, in the American spirit of fair play, went to court. Even though Samsung had not used her name, voice or actual likeness, she argued they had misappropriated her “identity.” While prior court decisions prohibited the unauthorized use of a name or face — say, on a bottle of ketchup or in a car commercial-never was the mere reminder of celebrity enough to win. A district court judge dismissed White’s suit, but the federal appeals court in San Francisco recently ruled otherwise. Unless the U.S. Supreme Court takes the extraordinary step of hearing the case, the lawsuit goes on and White will get her trial to determine damages, if any. “Decisions like this are ridiculous,” says Roger Zissu, a Manhattan copyright lawyer. “Does this mean Charles Manson can now sue any time anybody writes a novel or produces an ad that reminds people of bearded mass murderers?”
Could be, suggests Judge Alex Kosinski. He was one of the dissenters on the appeals court who last month tried, unsuccessfully, to get colleagues to rehear the case. In a sarcastic 17-page opinion, he warned that White’s victory would stifle parody and other kinds of creative expression in advertising and the arts. “Something very dangerous is going on here,” he wrote. “The last thing we need is a law that lets public figures keep people from mocking them, or from evoking their images in the mind of the public.”
Prognostications of chill on the First Amendment tend to be as accurate as winter weather forecasts. Yet already one new lawsuit has been filed that relies on the expanded rights of celebrities. Cliff and Norm, the buffoon barflies on “Cheers,” may have a sense of humor, but apparently the actors playing them don’t. John Ratzenberger and George Wendt are suing Host International, which operates a chain of “Cheers” airport bars. (There’s even one in New Zealand.) Each has dark wood paneling, the woodcarving of a Native American near the door-and replicas of Cliff and Norm. While the talking robots are named Bob and Hank, they have physical similarities to the television characters and their conversation is equally insipid. So Ratzenberger and Wendt say they’re being ripped off.
Of course, Ratzenberger and Wendt presumably have real lives apart from their NBC personas. It’s really Norm and Cliff-and the clever folks who created them-who have a beef with the bars. That, however, was before Vanna White flipped her vowels.
