Can You Sell Products With Celebrity Faces on Etsy? Right of Publicity Rules Explained

You found a great photo of a famous actor, musician, or athlete. You put it on a mug, a sticker sheet, or a t-shirt, and it sells. Then a listing gets pulled, or worse, a cease-and-desist letter shows up from a law firm you've never heard of. What happened?

Most Etsy sellers assume the only legal risks are trademark and copyright. When you put a real person's face on a product, you're stepping into a third, less-understood area of law: the right of publicity. It protects a person's name, image, voice, and likeness from being used commercially without permission — and it applies to celebrities, athletes, influencers, and in many states, everyday people too.

This guide explains what the right of publicity is, why it's different from the other IP problems you already worry about, what actually gets sellers into trouble, and the narrow situations where using a real person's likeness may be defensible.

Right of publicity is not trademark or copyright

These three areas of law overlap constantly on Etsy, which is why sellers confuse them. They protect different things and are enforced by different people.

Copyright protects a specific creative work — a photograph, a painting, a song. If you copy someone else's photo of a celebrity onto a product, you're infringing the photographer's copyright, not the celebrity's rights. The photographer, or whoever licensed the image, owns that.

Trademark protects brand identifiers — logos, band names, team names — used to identify the source of goods. A celebrity who has trademarked their name (many have) can pursue you on that basis, but trademark is about consumer confusion over who made or endorsed the product.

Right of publicity protects the person themselves — their identity as a commercial asset. It applies even if you drew the portrait yourself from scratch, took your own photo, or used a completely original illustration. The moment a customer can recognize who the product depicts, and you're profiting from that recognition, the right of publicity is in play regardless of who made the artwork.

The trap most sellers fall into: "I drew it myself, so it's my original art." Original artwork solves your copyright problem. It does nothing for the right of publicity. An original hand-drawn portrait of Zendaya sold on a t-shirt still uses her likeness for commercial gain.

Which states protect the right of publicity

Right of publicity is governed by state law, not federal law, so protection varies depending on where the person lives (or lived). More than half of US states recognize it, either by statute or through court decisions. The two that matter most are the ones where celebrities cluster.

California has one of the strongest regimes. Its statute (Civil Code § 3344) covers name, voice, signature, photograph, and likeness, and California also recognizes a common-law right on top of that. Damages can include the profits you made plus statutory minimums.

New York overhauled its law in 2021 to add protections and explicitly cover digital replicas and deepfakes. Tennessee — home to Nashville and the Elvis estate — passed the ELVIS Act in 2024, extending protection to voice and adding specific protection against AI-generated imitations.

Because you're selling on a platform that ships nationwide, you don't get to pick the friendliest state. A celebrity or their estate can generally bring a claim where they are based or where the harm occurred, which usually means California, New York, or Tennessee — the least seller-friendly options.

Rights that survive death

A common myth is that once a celebrity dies, their likeness is fair game. Sometimes true, often not. Many states recognize a post-mortem right of publicity that passes to the person's heirs or estate and lasts for decades.

California protects likeness for 70 years after death. Indiana protects it for 100 years. Tennessee's right can be renewed effectively indefinitely as long as it's being commercially used — which is exactly why the Elvis estate has been able to police Elvis merchandise for nearly half a century.

So selling a Marilyn Monroe tote, a Bob Marley candle, or a Tupac portrait print is not automatically safe just because the person passed away. Many of the biggest deceased-celebrity estates are aggressively licensed and aggressively enforced. If a name has an official licensing program, assume the estate is watching marketplaces.

What actually gets Etsy sellers in trouble

Etsy's own policy prohibits listings that violate someone's intellectual property or publicity rights, and the platform acts on reports. Here's what tends to trigger takedowns and legal letters, from most to least risky.

Putting a recognizable photo or portrait of a living celebrity directly on merchandise — shirts, mugs, posters, stickers, phone cases — is the clearest violation and the most commonly reported. Using a celebrity's name in your listing title, tags, or product ("Timothée Chalamet Candle") compounds the problem because it's both a likeness/publicity issue and often a trademark and search-manipulation issue. Selling fan art portraits of musicians and actors, even stylized ones, is still commercial use of a likeness. And AI-generated images of real people are squarely covered now — New York and Tennessee wrote digital replicas into their statutes specifically because of this.

Search tags are evidence, not just discovery. Sellers often keep the artwork vague but stuff the celebrity's name into every tag to catch searches. Rights holders and their monitoring services search those exact terms. Your tags are how they find you.

If you sell fan-focused merchandise for musicians or actors, our breakdowns of selling Taylor Swift merchandise and selling BTS and K-pop merchandise walk through how these same likeness rules play out for specific, heavily-policed names.

The narrow exceptions — and why they rarely help you

There are real First Amendment limits on the right of publicity. The problem is that they protect expression, not merchandise, and courts draw that line in a way that usually goes against sellers.

The main test many courts use is transformative use: has the person's likeness been so transformed by your own creative expression that the product is really your work rather than a literal depiction? A realistic portrait almost never passes. A genuinely transformative artistic reinterpretation sometimes does — but this is fact-specific, expensive to litigate, and a bad thing to bet your shop on.

News, commentary, and parody get more protection, but a physical product sold for profit is treated as commercial merchandise, not journalism, even if it makes a joke. A parody t-shirt of a politician is on firmer ground than a straight portrait, yet "it's satire" is a defense you raise in court, not a shield that stops the listing from being pulled.

The safest way to think about it: the exceptions protect you when the likeness is incidental to a genuine expressive message. They do not protect you when the likeness is the product and the whole reason someone buys it.

Special cases sellers ask about constantly

Athletes and sports figures. Layered risk. You've got the individual athlete's right of publicity plus the league's and team's trademarks (NFL, NBA, MLB, and college programs enforce aggressively). Group licensing bodies like the NFL Players Association handle player likeness rights collectively. Unlicensed player merchandise is a fast route to a takedown.

Influencers and YouTubers. They have the same right of publicity as any celebrity. A rising influencer with an engaged audience is more likely to notice and report unlicensed merch, not less, because their fans tag them in it.

Public figures and politicians. Political speech gets stronger First Amendment protection, which is why campaign-style parody merchandise exists. But straightforward "sell this person's face for profit" merchandise still carries publicity risk, and estates of deceased political figures license their likenesses too.

"Inspired by" and lookalike products. Deliberately evoking a specific person — their signature look, catchphrase, or silhouette — can trigger a claim even without a photo or name. Courts have found liability where a celebrity was clearly identifiable from context alone.

Historical figures. Someone who died centuries ago (before post-mortem statutes could apply) is generally safe as a likeness — but check for modern trademarks and for estates that still actively license 20th-century figures.

How to sell fan-adjacent products safely

You don't have to abandon pop-culture-adjacent products. You have to design around the person instead of selling the person.

Lean on original characters and concepts you own outright. Reference fan culture, cities, and shared experiences rather than a specific identifiable person — the same tactic that keeps sports sellers safe (city and fan-culture references instead of team marks). Where you genuinely want to use a real person, pursue a license; many estates and some living celebrities run official licensing programs, and licensed sellers get to advertise that legitimacy as a selling point. And keep your listing titles and tags clean — don't name a celebrity you're not licensed to use, because tags are exactly where enforcement finds you.

If a rights holder does come after you, don't panic-delete and hope. Read our guides on responding to an Etsy cease-and-desist letter and how many IP strikes it takes before Etsy suspends your shop so you understand your exposure before you respond. If you're already suspended, start with what to do when your Etsy shop is suspended.

The bottom line

The right of publicity is the risk most Etsy sellers never see coming, because it survives even when you've cleared copyright and trademark. Drawing the portrait yourself doesn't help. Removing the logo doesn't help. The person's identity is the thing being sold, and in California, New York, Tennessee, and dozens of other states, that identity is legally protected — often for decades after death.

Before you list anything featuring a real person, ask one question: is this person recognizable, and am I profiting because of who they are? If the answer is yes and you don't have a license, you're carrying real risk. Build your shop on identities you actually own — original art, original characters, and licensed work — and you remove an entire category of takedowns and lawsuits from your life.

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