At the beginning of its broadcast of the Super Bowl. Earlier this year, Fox aired a video about what it means to be the Greatest, using footage from Muhammad Ali's career, including knockouts and uh and his lighting of the Olympic torch. But Muhammad Ali Enterprises, which owns the right to Ali's name and likeness, has now sued Fox for thirty million dollars. There are laws who is on the grounds that Fox did not obtain permission to use the footage of Ali
in its promotional video. Here to talk about the cases, Chris Katropia, Professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law. Chris, why don't we start by talking about what this Fox video actually was? What did they
do here? Well, so the video is essentially a segue of talking about kind of Ali's career over time period sixties seventies up into the Olympic kind of lighting of the torch, and then it finally kind of segues into um, kind of the great um of the Super Bowl errors and so the the the constant segue is kind of Ali or a likeness of Ali walking down the tunnel like he's going to a fight in his different stages of his career, and then it eventually kind of transforms
into the Packers, you know, and the Bears, um, et cetera. And Fox aired this um sometime prior to its actual Super Bowl coverage on Super Bowl Sunday. Chris, should Fox have known in this day where publicity rights are so closely guarded that it wouldn't get away with using actual footage of Muhammad Ali without being sued? Um So. So, first of all, we don't know if they've gotten away with it yet or not, because we just have a
complaint being filed. But certainly, um, you can see different interests um in that someone like Muhammad Ali um or let's say Michael Jordan's is really concerned about the ability to control and commercialize their persona. But on the flip side, if I'm someone like Fox that wants to be able to have flexibility with different types of programming, um Uh,
the interest don't align. So maybe Fox and I don't know, maybe Fox to kind of a calculated risk in the sense of saying, you know, there's a possibility of a claim. Maybe Ali's family or enterprises wasn't willing to fix on a certain price, and maybe Fox would like to start a trend to say that it can do certain things like this, that this is okay. There might be things that aren't okay, but this is okay, and so they kind of calculatedly said, you know what, we're gonna do
this and and try to see if it's six. Well, what is the legal basis for suing Fox here? So it looks like from the complaint that was just filed there two kind of theories. Um. The first is a trademark based theory that the consumer would look at the ad and think incorrectly that Ali sponsors the Super Bowl or Fox or the NFL. So it's kind of a trademark, a likelihood of confusion as to endorsement. And then the
second claim is a right to publicity claim. And this is the idea that I, as the holder of a persona can prevent it from being used commercially. Um. And if it is used commercially, you need to get my my permission. And that's a state law claim, this idea of right of publicity. So those are the two claims
and what are potential defenses. So the big defense is probably going to be, first of all, that this was not a commercial use that it was this was merely kind of news reporting that we were kind of celebrating all these career after his death in two thousand and sixteen. UM. And so this non commercial use is protected and we're not improperly trying to monetize off of Ali. The second big defense is going to be a free speech defense. UM. That is that we have the freedom, even though we're
a corporation, to speak about matters of public interest. And that's exactly what we were doing. We were just reporting on this great man and his great career, UM and thought it was a great way to segue into what the super Bowl is. Well. One thing, Chris, it seems interesting here is that you know a new if if a news show on Fox We're to show video of Muhammad Ali, certainly you wouldn't have a claim, a promotional
claim like this from his estate. Is there any possibility Fox could say, you know that this we're covering a big sports event, this is effectively some kind of news documentary. I think that they will say that. I'm sure that will be one of their defenses. UM. And one of the big things that courts have a difficulty doing is that in some ways everything is commercial. Right, Even the news show on Foxes has a commercial nature to it
because they're selling advertising spots, etcetera. Um. But um, there has to be some line. And so Fox will say this is merely news reporting. Molli will say, come on, this is all about promotion and advertising. Um. And this
was essentially an ad Uh. There was an interesting case where Michael Jordan's sued a UM supermarket chain in Chicago that ran an add after he was inducted it into the NBA Hall of Fame that said congrats Michael um uh and Michael Jordan's sued for almost the exact same theories that munomad Ali is asserting here, saying that really was just an advertisement that was not news reporting and you can't trade off of my persona without paying me.
Christ and about thirty seconds explain where Muhammad Ali Enterprises is getting the thirty million dollar number. They're getting it off of what the going market rate would be for the three minute spot. UM. So essentially you got a three minute spot from us, so you should have paid us um thirty million dollars. And that's where the theory
is coming from. Our thanks to Chris Catropia, Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law for being with us here on Bloomberg Law to discuss the Alia State's lawsuit against Fox for its Super Bowl video