ABSTRACT
In Rihanna, the Court of Appeal restated the longstanding view of English courts that there is no ‘image right’ or ‘character right’ in English law. However, in Irvine, which was decided before Campbell, although the claimant was able to successfully rely on passing off to protect his image, Justice Laddie was willing to explore whether the Human Rights Act 1998 could be used to protect the claimant if the conclusion had been reached in that case that passing off had not developed sufficiently. This is similar to what the House of Lords did in Campbell by drawing on the Human Rights Act to develop a new tort of misuse of private information. In light of recent technological developments (including AI), this article proposes that English courts can use Campbell’s development of the tort of misuse of private information as a model to develop a new tort of publicity rights.
Emmanuel Kolawole Oke, Building on Campbell to develop a new tort of publicity rights in England for the AI age, Journal of Media Law. Published online: 19 April 2026.
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