This weekend I went to see the Baz Luhrmann Elvis biopic, which centered on the role of the sinister Tom Parker in the meteoric rise yet sad decline of Presley. Though seemingly not mature or astute enough to save Presley from both himself and the machinations and manipulations of unscrupulous businessmen and agents like Parker during his life, Presley’s widow and the attorneys of the estate quickly took action after his death to take control over the rights of his image. The right of publicity had long been part of Tennessee common law, but it had always been thought to end at death. Wrangling over Presley’s image led to a Tennessee Court of Appeals decision rendered ten years after his death that an individual’s right of publicity is descendible; thus the estate of the deceased inherits the right to control and profit off of the publicity of the decedent’s image. As the movie also pointed out in a caption during the ending credits, Tom Parker was sued by the estate also for his financial abuse of Elvis, but RCA brokered a settlement agreement whereby Parker still ended up walking away with two million dollars to sever ties once and for all with the estate of the artist he had mismanaged and defrauded for decades.