NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Copyright Surviving Death

In 2008, New York Mets pitcher Johan Santana earned $16.84 million. Not too shabby for one year’s work. Yet, Santana still has some work to do if he wants to beat out Albert Einstein, who made a whopping $18 million last year from beyond the grave. I’m sure this money was much appreciated by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who owns the rights to Einstein’s intellectual property and image, according to Einstein’s will.

Each year, Greenlight (the company Hebrew University hired to manage Einstein’s rights) receives approximately 400 applications requesting the use of his image, and only about 40 of these requests are granted. According to Forbes, these images have a wide range of uses:

Albert Einstein probably never thought he would be earning money from making babies smarter. But Baby Einstein, a majority Disney-owned suite of learning tools for infants, keeps expanding. International licensing with Nestle’s Japanese coffee brand, Charge, and an upcoming sneaker campaign with basketball player Kobe Bryant add to Einstein’s rich portfolio of deals.

I find it interesting just how much money it costs to use the images of dead celebrities. However, given the current debates over intellectual property, I really shouldn’t be surprised. Other celebrities who continue to receive royalties from their intellectual property include Elvis Presley, who raked in $52 million last year and Charles Shultz, whose Peanuts images brought in $33 million.

So this goes to show that, as the Israeli telephone company Pelephone learned, if you want to use a dead celebrity’s name in your advertising, you better make sure to get the appropriate licensing. Pelephone used the slogan “Everyone’s become an Einstein” in its marketing and was asked by Hebrew University to stop using Einstein’s name. The reason? Because the company wouldn’t pay the more than $100,000 sum that Hebrew University wanted to charge for permission.

Who says you can’t take it with you?