right could nottrump the Clubs' right under the Copyright Act to control thetelecast. See 805 F.2d at 678-79. The Seventh Circuit recog-nized, as the panel here does not, that the players and theclubs were fighting over the same bundle of intellectual prop-erty rights: In this litigation, the Players have attempted to obtain ex post what they did not negotiate ex ante. That is to say, they seek a judicial declaration that they possess a right--the right to control the tele- casts of major league baseball games--that they could not procure in bargaining with the Clubs.Id. at 679. The clubs owned both the right to sell tickets to seethe games and the copyright to the telecast. The copyrightpreempted whatever state law rights the players claimed, atleast insofar as state law would prevent ordinary use of thecopyrighted work. See also Fleet v. CBS, Inc., 50 Cal. App.4th 1911, 1920-21 (1996). The same reasoning applies here:The plaintiffs' right to control the use of their likeness is pre-empted by Paramount's right to exploit the Norm and Cliffcharacters however it sees fit. If Wendt and Ratzenberger 14907wanted to control how the Cheers characters were portrayedafter they left the show, they should have negotiated for itbeforehand.7IVComing home to roost is yet another problem I warnedabout in White--that a broad reading of the state right of pub-licity runs afoul of the dormant Copyright Clause, which pre-empts state intellectual property laws to the extent they"prejudice the interests of other States." Goldstein v. Califor-nia, 412 U.S. 546, 558 (1973). Just as a state law regulatingthe length of trucks is invalid under the dormant CommerceClause if it poses an undue burden on interstate commerce,see Kassel v. Consolidated Freightways Corp. , 450 U.S. 662,674 (1981), so California's right of publicity law is invalid ifit substantially interferes with federal copyright law, eve...
