How are courts protecting personality rights?

For Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international Significance

For Mains Examination: GS II - Indian Polity

Context:

The Delhi High Court has recently issued a series of orders protecting the personality rights of Bollywood celebrities from unauthorised commercial use. On September 9 and 10, Justice Tejas Karia granted relief to actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan, after they flagged the misuse of their images and voices through AI-generated content and merchandise. A week later, Justice Manmeet P.S. Arora extended similar protections to filmmaker Karan Johar, by barring the unauthorised use of his persona through deepfakes, and other digital manipulation. Actors Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, and Jackie Shroff have already secured such protections. These petitions signal a wider push for judicial recognition of personality rights in the digital era.

Read about:

Copyright Act, 1957

Are personality rights protected?

Key takeaways:

• Personality rights protect an individual’s identity markers—such as name, image, likeness, voice, signature, and other unique features—from being commercially misused without consent.
• Although India does not have a single codified law on this subject, these rights are recognised through common law principles relating to privacy, defamation, and publicity, and are further strengthened by judicial rulings.
• Remedies available to courts include injunctions, monetary compensation, and takedown orders to prevent misuse in advertisements, merchandise, AI-generated material, or online platforms.
• Legal recognition is scattered across different intellectual property statutes. Under the Copyright Act, 1957, performers enjoy both exclusive rights (Section 38A) and moral rights (Section 38B), giving them authority to control the use of their performances and object to distortion or unauthorised reproduction.
• Similarly, the Trade Marks Act, 1999, allows public figures to register personal identifiers—such as names, signatures, and popular phrases—as trademarks. Celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Ajay Devgn, and Amitabh Bachchan have secured trademark registrations for their names.
• Still, the strongest protection often arises from the tort of “passing off” under Section 27 of the Trade Marks Act, which safeguards the goodwill attached to an unregistered mark and prevents misrepresentation suggesting false association or endorsement.
• However, courts usually require proof of reputation and goodwill before offering relief, making such protection conditional.
• At its core, personality rights are linked to autonomy and privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. When a celebrity chooses to feature in a campaign, film, or advertisement, they exercise agency over their public persona.
• But unauthorised uses—such as printing their photographs on products or generating deepfakes and AI chatbots in their likeness—strip them of this autonomy, eroding both dignity and control.

Judicial Developments

• The doctrine of personality rights in India originates from R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (1994), where the Supreme Court recognised the individual’s right to control the use of their identity while linking it to the constitutional right to privacy.
• In this case, the Court allowed post-publication remedies like defamation suits but ruled against prior censorship, clarifying that personal details already in the public record may be published without consent.
• Later, in a case involving actor Rajinikanth, the Madras High Court restrained the release of the film Main Hoon Rajnikanth, holding that celebrities can prevent unauthorised commercial use of their identity even without proof of deception, provided they are clearly recognisable.
• The digital era has brought newer challenges. In 2023, the Delhi High Court granted Anil Kapoor broad protection over his persona—including his name, image, voice, likeness, and even his