• The New York Times, Tuesday, June 5, 2007 11:30 AM

As part of an ill-fated campaign featuring dead celebrities, the London office of Saatchi & Saatchi recently featured an image of Kurt Cobain sitting on a cloud in the sky shod in Dr. Martens boots. Courtney Love, the widow of the deceased lead singer for Nirvana, grew angry when she heard about the ads, which ran in a small British music magazine, There were then submitted to an American ad industry Web site.

In the U.S, the estates of dead celebrities are allowed to control the use of their images; in Britain, however, lawyers say no approval is needed. Saatchi says that it found the images in the Corbis photo library and obtained copyright clearance to use them in Britain. The trouble began when an employee--disobeying instructions, Saatchi insists--submitted them to www.AdCritic.com.

Creatives send ads to sites like AdCritic in order to generate awards-season chatter. Clients rarely complain, because they get free advertising. In this case, however, Airwair International--the British company that makes Dr. Martens--fired Saatchi, canceling a contract reportedly worth $9.9 million over three years.

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