JAPRPO Non-Profitable Organization　Japan Publicity Rights Protection Organization

Publicity Rights Protection Organization was first founded in 1986 which has been actively involving in lawmaking activities related to protect artist's name and image properties since.
Its activities progress gradually after Tokyo Supreme Court's verdict in the "O Nyan Ko Club" case those talents
Of the Club not only won the their names and images' personality right, but also their images property in 1991.
Since the organization was registered as a non-profit organization in year 2000, we are committed to ban again illegal commodities; to build up laws to protect publicity; and, to expend our membership by recruiting new members.

Since Tokyo District Court verdict in the "Mark Lester" case in 1976, name, image and publicity rights of popular talents and sport players are being recognized as property rights.
Also, Tokyo Supreme Court had identified clearly that name, image and publicity rights have potential to attract customer's consuming power and control its value in the "O Nyan Ko Club" case, 1991. Since then, the publicity right is being protected by Japanese law.

Nevertheless, there have been many case of abuse in name and image right caused by the ignorance to the publicity right.
Typical examples are snap shots of popular talents and sports players are being used to sell as products without permissions.
Revenues generated by these illegal products is reported over Japanese Yen 10 billion annually.
If we don't take appropriate actions to protect copyright and trademark, it would be bad influence for our industry to practice the right fairly.
More important, we have to protect the publicity right in the "internet" era, otherwise, the damage to publicity right would be increasing eventually.

We established Publicity Rights Protection Organization as we shared the vision to protect and monitor the potential crime against the publicity right in the past decades. In order for us to increase the public's awareness on the publicity right, we formed Non-profit Organization Japan Publicity Rights Protection Organization.