A good friend of mine, who is a lawyer specializing in patent and trademark law, maintains a blog dedicated to his other legal love - defamation.
Brian is the kind of guy the revels in legal theory and revels even more in legal minutia. Probably why he will make a great law professor one day.
That being said, a day before Kathy Hilton, noted hotelier and John McCain donor, wrote her post on HuffingtonPost blasting McCain for using her daughter's image in a commercial depicting her as the epitomy of empty celebrity, Brian wrote the following post on "Slander and Libel".
While not quite a "defamation" issue, John McCain's campaign recently made the unfortunate blunder of abusing the image of Paris Hilton, purportedly as a means of painting rival candidate Barack Obama as "the biggest celebrity in the world." The problem is that Miss Hilton has the legal right to control the use of her image, especially when it is being used to market a product. And, as it turns out, the McCain camp failed to check with Miss Hilton before using her image to market their product. This has not passed unnoticed by the victim, Miss Hilton, who "has blasted the McCain camp for using her image without asking for permission," and whose representatives have flatly reported that "Miss Hilton was not asked, nor did she give permission for the use of her likeness in the ad."
I thought I would share. Anything to encourage as much money as possible to be taken out of the coffers of the McCain campaign.