Albert Einstein
The 69-year old granddaughter of Theory of Relativity author Albert Einstein is seeking her share of her famous ancestor’s estate profits. Evelyn Einstein, a cancer survivor, said she has not received anything from the marketing and sale of Einstein merchandise. She said she needs the money for healthcare.
The physicist, who was born in Germany, left the literary rights of over 75,000 papers and other items of his estate to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Einstein died in 1955.
The university uses GreenLight, LLC, a company in Los Angeles, to handle the licensing for Einstein items, including clothes, coffee cups, puzzles, coins, posters and other collectors’ items.
GreenLight, in turn, is part of the Corbis Company which provides advertising, marketing and media services through its offering of stock photography, illustration, footage, fonts, merchandize, rights clearance and rights representation services.
Aside from representing Einstein, Greenlight also represents boxer Muhammad Ali, karate actor Bruce Lee, opera artist Maria Callas and another inventor, Thomas Edison.
Evelyn said she wrote to the Hebrew University to seek her share of the sales, but the university replied that the income earned from the use of Einstein’s image is solely used for scientific research
