Roger Richmond is a Hollywood agent, but instead of representing living movie stars, he runs a talent agency for the dead ones. It's something only he and whoever reps Larry King have in common. Richmond's entire job is waiting for families of deceased stars to contact him so that he can be their agent, which has led him to work for half the people who were around in the Golden Age of Hollywood, as well as such famous now-rotted faces like Sigmund Freud and the Wright Brothers. So if some Mad Men-style marketing genius wants to use a still of Steve McQueen fighting Freud balancing on the wings on the first-ever biplane in an ad campaign, they've gotta go through Richmond.
And Richmond, in turn, has to go through Bill Gates. See, Gates' company Corbis bought out Richmond's agency back in 2005, gaining final say on all marketing opportunities. Corbis itself is Gates' image bank division, and owns copyrights to dozens of iconic celebrity pictures. That means that Gates now not only decides who gets to buy these images, but then also what they are allowed to use them for. And ever since the acquisition, they've been remarkably guarded about the use of Einstein's image. Anything that utilizes the "Einstein brand" has to ensure that Gates approves and gets a cut. And if owning the company that owns Einstein's image isn't the sweetest revenge for Steve Jobs using him in those "Think Different" ads for so long, we don't know what is.
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