Whether a former employer can keep using your face, voice, or content after you leave depends on what usage rights you actually signed, not on the fact that you're no longer employed. California's right of publicity protects your name and likeness, but it can be waived or licensed by a signed release. Check what you actually agreed to before assuming either way.
In This Article
If part of your job involved appearing in a company's marketing, social media content, training videos, or promotional material, it's easy to assume that use of your face, voice, or content simply ends when your employment does. Whether that's true depends almost entirely on what you agreed to, in writing, while you were employed.
This comes up constantly for people who never thought of themselves as "on camera" employees at all, a retail worker who appeared in a store's social media reel, a nurse featured in a hospital recruiting video, a server whose photo ended up in a restaurant's ad campaign. None of them signed up expecting their likeness to become a permanent piece of a company's marketing library, but that's often exactly what happens when a quick photo or video gets treated as routine workplace content rather than something requiring a real conversation about rights and duration.
What Happens to Your Content and Likeness When You Leave
Nothing happens automatically. If a company has content featuring you and no agreement limiting how long they can use it, they may be legally entitled to keep using it indefinitely, your departure doesn't revoke a license you already granted, whether you signed one deliberately or as boilerplate paperwork on day one.
This surprises a lot of people because it feels backwards, why would a company still get to use your face in an ad campaign after you've moved on entirely? But a usage right, once validly granted, generally works like any other license: it stays in effect according to its own terms, not according to your current employment status, unless the agreement itself ties the license's duration to your employment or gives you a way to revoke it.
You appeared in a company's website hero photo two years ago and signed a general release at the time with no expiration date. A year after you leave, the same photo is still live on the site. If the release didn't limit the timeframe, the company may be within its rights to keep using it.
Did You Sign Anything Granting Usage Rights?
Check your onboarding paperwork for a , a media consent form, or language buried in an employment agreement or handbook acknowledgment. The specific terms matter enormously: some releases are limited to a specific campaign or a defined time period, others grant broad, perpetual rights with no expiration tied to your employment at all.
Pay close attention to a few specific things in whatever you signed: whether it names a specific project or campaign versus "any and all future use," whether there's a geographic or platform limitation, such as internal training only versus public advertising, and whether there's any language about revocation or expiration. A release that's silent on duration is often interpreted as granting an indefinite right, which is why vague, boilerplate language tends to favor the company far more than a departing employee expects.
California's Right of Publicity
California recognizes a , your legal right to control commercial use of your name, image, and likeness. This right can be waived or licensed by agreement, which is exactly what a signed release does, but it still exists as a baseline: if there's no valid agreement covering the specific use in question, continued commercial use of your likeness after you've left may not be authorized at all.
Damages for an unauthorized commercial use of your likeness can include the value the company gained from using it, and in some situations, statutory damages that don't require you to prove a specific dollar loss. This right also generally survives regardless of your job title. It isn't limited to public figures or influencers, an ordinary employee whose photo, voice, or video appears in a company's marketing has the same underlying right of publicity as anyone else. The difference between an authorized use and an unauthorized one almost always comes down to whether a valid, sufficiently broad release exists, not whether the person featured is famous. That's a common misconception worth clearing up early, since it leads a lot of ordinary employees to assume, wrongly, that this kind of claim simply isn't available to them.
What You Can Actually Do About It
Start by requesting a copy of anything you signed regarding image or content usage, don't assume you remember the exact terms. HR departments are generally required to keep personnel-related paperwork, so a written request for your own signed records is a reasonable ask that most companies will honor without much pushback. If content featuring you is still being used commercially with no valid agreement covering it, or is being used in a way that goes beyond what you actually agreed to, that's worth having reviewed. This question comes up constantly for social media content creators specifically, since the content itself is often the entire job product.
It's also reasonable to simply ask the company directly, in writing, to confirm what agreement they're relying on and to remove or update content if there's no valid basis for continued use. Some companies will do this without much friction once asked, especially if the content is outdated anyway and low-value to keep online. If they decline or don't respond, that written request becomes useful evidence of when you raised the issue. Start a free case review to understand your options.
This article is for general educational purposes and is not individualized legal advice, and may not reflect the most current law. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with the Law Offices of Corey A. Pingle. If you're dealing with a real workplace issue, contact our office or start a free case review to get guidance based on your actual facts.