A Legal Examination of Personal Copyright and Invasion of Privacy
- WULR Team
- Dec 9, 2025
- 4 min read
An analysis of intellectual property law and privacy in the United States
Published December 11th, 2025
Written by David Youssef
The first thought of the term “intellectual property” is typically copyrighted music, trademarked brand names, patented inventions, or, if someone is really knowledgeable, trade secrets. You, as a person, might never even cross your mind. In an increasingly digitized world, where records are becoming more extensive and valuable, your very appearance, reputation and person are not just important, but marketable. However, with a process as gradual as the shift in statutes and codes, the law has fallen behind on this increasingly pressing issue.
Intellectual property contains 4 main areas of interest. According to Georgetown Law, copyright protects artistic or digital creations from being replicated without the permission of the owner. Trademarks are for brands and company names, helping people recognize their product, protecting them against copies intended to mislead the public. Patents are specifically for inventions, from a single physical object to a more elaborate process, with a lifetime of 20 years. Trade Secrets are any knowledge that the public doesn’t know about the business, such as Coca-Cola's formula. Each one of these areas has been firmly cemented in both federal and state law. However, noticeably absent from this list is what David Casimer dubs the “Right of Publicity”, which has no federal law or statute protecting it. According to Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, about half the states protect this right, though sometimes under privacy laws and not as a distinct right.
Wisconsin is one such state that protects this right of privacy, specifically under statute 995.50. This covers the forbidding of physical trespass, using anyone’s likeness for a product without their permission, and the protection against people publicly releasing information deemed “highly offensive to a reasonable person”. But, there is one notable exception to all of these protections: surveillance and recording. The interaction between the invasion of privacy and recording is extremely complex. For instance, the only noted exception in statute 995.50 is 995.60, which deals with recording laws specifically for real estate sales, with the typical caveats of restrooms or other places where people would have a reasonable expectation of privacy. This carries over to the realm of video surveillance, where all recording is allowed, provided the expectation of privacy doesn’t exist. In terms of recording audio and conversations, Wisconsin is what is called a one-party consent state, meaning that by law, any conversation can be recorded so long as at least one of the parties agrees to it.
Beyond simple recording, there are even certain caveats to what is allowed to be protected in terms of quotes. In Carson v. Here's Johnny Portable Toilets, Late Night Talk Show Host Johnny Carson sued a porta-potty company in Michigan for using a famous phrase of his, “Here’s Johnny”, which was an integral part of his apparel business. While initially denied, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned this, saying it could lead to a violation of the right of privacy and cause confusion about the nature of the products. Alongside being a humorous instance of the U.S. justice system at work, this case also established an important precedent. Even the things we say, under the right set of circumstances, could be considered copyright-protected.
If we weave these laws together, we can create certain situations that, while legal in theory, raise important questions about how we approach individuals and copyright. For one thing, what constitutes a person’s likeness? Could a zoomed-in picture of a giant gash on my friend's arm constitute his “likeness” if no one could reasonably identify that it was him? If he’s in a public place, I can record him, including him saying his favorite quote. How famous does he have to be before I can’t put that quote and image on a T-shirt and sell it? Does he solely have to have a company using this quote? Or if — assuming selling the shirt would constitute a violation — showing the video to someone in exchange for anything would also be one. Each of these hypotheticals represents the ability to use ambiguity of the law to punish acts that most, if not all, ordinary citizens wouldn’t even think of as a violation of any statute.
But let’s contrast this and demonstrate how the law is not clear: in an increasingly digital world, AI is becoming more and more commonplace in our day-to-day lives. So, can Siri, in a one-party state such as Wisconsin, record your conversations with her if she becomes so advanced she’s near human? We agree to Terms and Conditions constantly, but could that feasibly be considered consent, given how extensive and inaccessible they are to the common citizen? Imagine, every time you converse with Siri or unlock your phone with FaceID, that data is being stored and sold, either because you gave consent, the law allows it or “reasonable expectation of privacy” isn’t met if you have your phone with you?
These two extremely contrasting cases in which the law could potentially be abused highlight one thing: in a world where everything from what you say to how you look could be valuable to somebody, the law has yet to catch up, lacking the nuance needed to face future cases. It may not happen soon, and it certainly won’t be in one of these scenarios, but a time may be coming when these laws of how each person interacts with their own copyright and sense of privacy will simply not be enough to protect the individual citizen.
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