Sofia Vergara Sues Venus Concept For $15 Million For Using Her Likeness


Modern Family star Sofia Vergara has filed a $15 million lawsuit against beauty company Venus Concept after she says she has made repeated attempts to get the company to stop using her name and likeness in their advertisements without her permission. People obtained court documents in which Sofia Vergara and her attorneys state that the company has used her image and her name at exhibition booths, at trade shows, and in internet-based advertising.

Sofia Vergara stated in her suit that she did try Venus Concept’s Legacy skin tightening massage treatment in August 2014 as she was gearing up for the Emmys the following month, and she didn’t like it.

“Vergara tried the Legacy treatment, but ultimately did not like it, finding that it was a waste of time and money with little in the way of any results […] [Vergara] would not use it again, and certainly would not endorse it nor agree to appear in an international advertisement campaign to promote it […] she does not recommend the Venus Legacy product or services.”

During the treatment, Sofia Vergara posted a selfie to her WhoSay account, alerting Venus Concept that she had tried the pricey treatment. Oddly, Vergara and her team have not removed this post from her feed, even though it is the image that Venus Concept has been unlawfully using in its advertising. Venus Concept has run ads captioning the photo with lines such as, “Loved by bombshell actress Sofia Vergara.” Vergara also claims in the suit that the photo appeared in an episode of Extra, highlighting an appearance by a doctor employed by Venus Concept who was promoting the non-surgical Legacy treatment.

Sofia Vergara is far from the only celebrity to run into this kind of trouble — the ostensible anonymity of the internet has given rise to a legion of spam, and a good deal of it uses the names and likenesses of celebrities to promote products that they have never and would never endorse. In September of 2012, cardiothoracic surgeon and talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz wrote an understandably angry blog post denouncing such tactics, having discovered his own name and likeness had been unlawfully used to promote products not just online but “at pharmacies, health food stores and grocery stores.”

Oz claimed to have found aisles of products that he had never endorsed sitting under a banner with his image. Unlike Sofia Vergara, Oz did not sue, but he and his team asked executives at Facebook and Amazon to make an effort to remove fraudulent advertisements, and both tech companies were receptive. He stated that he had never been a spokesman for any brand nor supplement, and made the decision to stop using any brand names on his talk show, The Dr. Oz Show, to mitigate confusion.

In another situation similar to Sofia Vergara’s, Kim Kardashian sued Old Navy and its parent company, Gap, Inc., in 2011 for airing television commercials starring an actress who allegedly looked very similar to Kardashian and seemed to be imitating her persona.

The employee who posted tweets for Old Navy at the time had also posted a since-deleted tweet stating, “@CBSNEWS reports that Old Navy’s Super CUTE star looks like @kimkardashian. #LOL. What do you think?”

Kardashian settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed sum in the spring of 2012. In a 2012 lawsuit, George Clooney and Julia Roberts claimed that, like Sofia Vergara, large photographs of them were used to promote expensive movie projectors and entertainment systems.

For her part, Sofia Vergara is specifically alleging misappropriation of common law right of publicity and has filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court. The suit further states that Venus Concept “commenced and began [sic] to engage in a scheme to usurp, use and exploit Vergara’s celebrity and universal recognition in a worldwide marketing campaign to market and advertise their products and services.”

Sofia Vergara has not commented on the lawsuit publicly, and neither has Venus Concept.

[Image via Peabody Awards / CC 2.0]

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