s, the Archives of Milton H. Greene and Tom Kelley Studios attempted to market and license images of Monroe, only to be blocked by MMLLC and CMG’s claims that they owned Monroe’s rights of publicity.

This ruling clears the way for the Milton H. Greene Archives and Tom Kelley Studios to license their extraordinary images of Marilyn Monroe to be used for commercial uses, including merchandise and promotions. The Greene and Kelley photographic collections include some of the most amazing, alluring and high quality images of Marilyn Monroe.

In related news, Greene and Kelley announced that their content will be available through the Marilyn Monroe Licensing Group, a division of Legends Licensing, LLC. Legends Licensing, LLC will serve as a “one stop shop” for Marilyn Monroe images and will represent other content providers with notable and commercially usable photographic images of Marilyn Monroe.

Kelley is famous for his provocative 1949 shots of the aspiring 21 year old model and actress. He posed a nude Marilyn on a red velvet cloth and snapped artistic photos of her that became known as the “Red Velvet Collection.” Later, in 1953, Hugh Hefner used one of those photos to help launch the pilot issue of Playboy Magazine. Another appeared on a calendar known as “Golden Dreams.” These photographs of Marilyn Monroe are what some consider as having catapulted her into super-stardom. Milton H. Greene's extensive photo collection also includes iconic images of Marilyn Monroe. Greene had occasion to photograph her more than any other photographer because of his close personal relationship with Monroe. Greene captured a more mature Monroe, who was now a famous actress, and his photographs depicted Marilyn in a variety of glamorous, environmental, and artistic poses.

The recent litigation focused on the fact when Marilyn Monroe died on August 5, 1962, none of the states where she was possibly domiciled, New York or California, recognized a descendible postmortem publicity right. The Court initially ruled in May 2007 that when Marilyn Monroe died she had no publicity rights to her images and therefore could not pass it on to her heirs or beneficiaries, but MMLLC secured an amendment to the California law in October of 2007 which gives the right of publicity of persons who died before 1985 to the residuary beneficiaries under their will. The Amendment, however, only applies to Marilyn Monroe if she died “domiciled” in California. A person’s domicile is the one place that person considers a permanent home.

In the motion just decided, MMLLC tried to convince the Court that Marilyn Monroe was domiciled in California when she died. Greene and Kelley maintained that this claim is inconsistent with the claims made for nearly 40 years by MMLLC’s predecessors in interest, the representatives of Marilyn Monroe’s Estate, including Anna Strasberg who is the majority owner and manager of MMLLC. The Court found that the statements made by the representatives of the Estate, including the affidavits of Marilyn Monroe’s friends and employees, all claimed that Marilyn died domiciled in New York.