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BIOGRAPHY
For over a quarter of a century, CMG Worldwide chairman and CEO Mark Roesler has successfully positioned his marketing and management company as the dominant force in the evolving intellectual property arena.
"Before we started working in this area, deceased celebrities or their estates had no rights to their name or images," Roesler says.
CMG Worldwide is the exclusive business agent for over 200 of the world's most sought after and recognizable celebrities, including: entertainment giants Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Sophia Loren; sports legends Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson and Vince Lombardi; musical entities Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly; and historical figures Diana, Princess of Wales and Malcolm X.
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| Roesler, left, waits
to meet Jane Pauley at his college graduation, where
Jane received an honorary degree. |
An entrepreneur at heart, Roesler started his own roofing company to put himself through college, first as an undergraduate at DePauw University. The assiduous student then became a licensed real estate broker while attending the Indiana University School of Law and Graduate School of Business, where he earned joint Juris Doctorate and Master of Business Administration degrees in 1981. That same year, Roesler's talents were secured to protect Norman Rockwell's artwork when he signed on with Curtis Publishing, long time supplier of The Saturday Evening Post, and licensing manager of the painter's artwork after his death in 1978. Through his attentive efforts to protect the artwork, Roesler discovered that families of famous deceased personalities were in need of the same legal defense to safeguard their loved ones' names and likenesses. As Roesler diligently created the ground work for a company that could take on such a momentous- and unheard of task, he was selected as the licensing agent for the Elvis Presley estate.
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| Mark paints the dome
of an Anderson, Ind. building in July 1979, when he
owned a roofing business. |
Needless to say, Roesler's legal foresight and personal intuition were dead on- no pun intended. Before Roesler, the heirs of deceased celebrities were denied the right to compensation for use of their personas and had no control of whether their names or likenesses were used. Today, he is internationally recognized as the world's foremost authority on intellectual property rights involving celebrities, credited with helping to establish guidelines that delegate the control of a celebrity's image or likeness. Still as industrious as ever, Roesler continues to make history with legal battles that have shaped the emerging area of intellectual property law. In 1988 he took the field against Major League Baseball and earned the right for retired players to be shown in their team uniforms while endorsing a product or service. Several years later, Roesler locked horns with entertainment conglomerate Warner Bros. when they claimed ownership of the lucrative merchandising and endorsement rights to James Dean because the star was under contract with them when he died. Roesler maintained Dean's family possessed those rights, and in 1992 the courts agreed. Countless stars and their estates have since used the landmark case to effectively protect and market their names and likenesses-benefited immeasurably from the pursuits of this relentless entrepreneur.
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