Does Apple have to pay royalties to all these directors?

Apple has this (IMHO) dorky “Think Different” ad campaign, where they show a picture of a famous movie director like Charlie Chaplin or Orson Welles, and, like, that’s supposed to make me rush right out and buy an Apple Computer or something?

Anyway, do they have to pay royalties to the estates of these (mostly dead) directors? Or does that come under the heading of “fair use”, because they’re celebrities?

I remember a big flap during a Coke (?) campaign a while back where they used the magic of computer graphics to stick Humphrey Bogart (Bing Crosby?) in the middle of a Coke song-and-dance routine. How did that ever come out? Did they have to pay royalties there, too?

I know that if you want to use Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley, you have to settle up with their estates in advance, but is that just because they happen to have particularly militant trustees, or are all celebrity estates like that?

Basically, if your face is prominent enough that someone can make money off of it, then they have to pay royalties. Of course, when your face passes out of the public eye into history, then it becomes public domain. For someone like Orson Welles or Chaplain, whose works are still being distributed around the world, I would guess there’s a commercial value. For someone like Einstein, who died more than 40 years ago, and whose impact was less commercial, I don’t know.

You used to be able to use the image of a deceased celebrity in ads, but a few years ago California passed a law requiring you pay money to the estate for the privilege. Similar laws may have been passed in other states (I know, for instance, Fred Astaire’s widow was paid for the rights to use Fred’s image in that vacuum cleaner commercial).

I don’t know how the law determines which images require payments and which don’t.