Professional Basketball Players and the Rights to their Names

(Editor’s Note: What follows is an excerpt from the ABA book The Little Book of Basketball Law, written by Melissa Altman Linsky. Linsky is an adjunct law professor at Emory Law School and a sports and marketing law attorney in Atlanta. The chapter, which deals with “Professional Basketball Players and the Rights to their Names,” analyzes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar v. General Motors Corp., 85 F.3d 407 (9th Cir. 1996) and contrasts that with another case, Mine O’Mine, Inc. v. Calmese and True Fa