Word: epee
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...estate was heading toward the red when Priscilla took over. There were the taxes and maintenance on Graceland, salaries for hangers-on and family members, the looming depredations of the IRS. By the early '80s, Priscilla, now both trustee for the Presley estate and president of EPE, had recruited her own money manager, a Kansas City, Mo., businessman named Jack Soden, and the two of them set about figuring out what to do with the estate. The most obvious move, which they explored, would have been to sell off Graceland; one potential buyer, the city of Memphis, did a feasibility...
With money flowing in from Graceland, EPE could afford to turn its attention to a thornier problem: controlling Elvis' name and likeness. Earnest collectors of Elvisabilia remember the late '70s and early '80s as a woeful time when shoddy gewgaws--Elvis toenail clippers, vials of "Elvis Presley's Sweat"--were sold with impunity and by companies that paid no licensing fees to EPE. At issue was what is known as "rights of descendability of publicity"--legalese for the ability of a famous person to control the use of his or her name and likeness. Existing law, while not entirely clear...
With laws, of course, come litigation--so much of it in this case that EPE quickly became known as the Darth Vader of the merchandising-licensing business. "All we want," says Soden, "is to run our business and not have every little schlocky guy around ripping off Elvis and putting his face on edible underwear and all kinds of things that demean the long-term value of what we've got." One of these cases went all the way to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which in an oft-cited landmark 1991 case involving a British retailer named Elvisly...
Like the Walt Disney Co. and Lucasfilm Ltd., EPE is indeed a ferocious guardian of its properties and with a wolverine-like tenacity, has managed to back off everyone from the Thomas Cook travel agency (trinkets for Memphis tours) to the state of Mississippi (Elvis-shaped flower arrangements) to fan clubs in Kuala Lumpur to the Federal Government of the U.S. (in a dispute over licensing the popular 1993 Elvis stamp). The Presley cases remain the legal precedent most often cited when other stars' estates attempt to lay cease-and-desist orders on "infringers," making EPE a hero to many...
...personally made tens of millions. In 1993, when she turned 25, with cash rolling in from Graceland and some 100 well-heeled Elvis licensees, she quite wisely reappointed her mother as trustee of the estate. Besides facilitating her brief marriage to Michael Jackson, Lisa Marie's majority has freed EPE to take greater risks; thus the real estate deals and coming clubs and casinos. Even in Elvisworld, however, there is such a thing as excess. Priscilla turns up her nose at the notion that Elvis clubs might some day reach a McDonald's level of saturation. "Then it's about...