The right to individual privacy, is regarded as an intrinsic part of right to life and personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21, of the Constitution of India, which forms the very basis for the protection of Personality rights aka. Celebrity rights”. The Apex Court of India in its celebrated judgment of Justice K.S Puttaswamy (Retd) & Anr vs. Union of India confirmed and affirmed the constitutional backing for the individual privacy rights. Unlike the right to privacy, personality rights largely is limited to a certain strata of the society, though time and again the Indian Courts have come forward to protect the personality rights, whilst relying on the inadequate existingstatutory framework which govern the Trade Marks, Copyrights and the Information Technology. Without a special legislative enactment or statutory backing, the issue looming over the protection of Personality rights against potential unauthorized utilization, commercial exploitation and misuse of personal information and unjust enrichment of “Intellectually preserveable” rights of individuals remains unanswered. The judicial protection under the aforementioned laws only addresses the issue peripherally, In the ear of Artificial Intelligence and deep fakes perhaps in my humble opinion the unauthorized utilization and the commercial exploitation of the personality rights certainly require a robust statutory frame work especially the legitimacy of the constitutional guarantee of individual privacy protecting the personality rights forever remains undisputed. This article examines the judicial interpretation of existing Indian legal framework to protect the personality as a stopgap method, further a comparative analysis of Jurisprudence and the consequent evolution of special statues in the United States and the in European context will provide a diverse perspective of necessary changes that could possibly aid the evolution personality laws in the Indian context.
At the outset, the terminology personality (or) celebrity has no legal definition in the Indian legal framework, the concept of Personality Rights can be attributed to one’s Name, Image, voice, Personal characteristics, signature, mannerism, contribution in various domains, the definition certainly exhaustive but not exclusive. The term “celebrity” encompasses a broad and diverse category of individual persons, such as artists, models, singers, politicians, musicians, athletes and sports stars, well-known business executives, musicians, television personality, and even social media influencers etc.
There exists a variety of individuals, whom one can consider as ‘celebrities’. There are traditional public figures such as actors, musicians, politicians, sports persons and even new celebrities such as social widgets whose personality is monetarily marketable. There have been initiatives by Indian courts to safeguard the personality rights of famous personalities, which has been borrowed from trademark law, copyright law and passing off torts. Though this protection has been provided, it has been comparatively narrow and inflexible, usually leaving average common people without credible remedy whenever their personality rights are violated.
However, the usage of these rights, that is, the personality rights, in India varies consistently depending on the type of person. For instance, attorneys, performers, sportspersons, and social media pathbreakers seem to garner a greater respect for their rights of personality because the courts consider their person to be a source of profitable interest. There are of course, instances in numerous societies, when, the protection of such rights, has been limited, in many instances sidelining average persons with no proper remedy for any abuse or infringement of their personality rights.
While other countries have not been very clear and distinct in defining the publicity rights, the United States has taken publicity rights as legal rights in their own right. These rights allows individuals to protect personality rights whenever their identity attributes are used for commerce regardless of the invasion of privacy. Unfortunately, the Indian legal frame work still depends on conventional IP laws, which include the Trade Marks Act and Copyright Act, to protect the personality rights. There are some loopholes that have been exploited in the society and the judiciary has in an attempt to close these gaps resorted to use of judicial precedent however, due to lack of legal provision that can guide the judiciary, The law remains open and not properly defined and variable.
Legal Framework in India
The personality rights have been understood in India by reading down the existing IP laws, especially the trademark, copyright and the IT laws. These statutes have been used by the judiciary in a selective way to deal with other unauthorized uses of personality traits, but there are still loopholes. The Trade Marks Act 1999 is the most frequently cited legislation as personality rights are compared to the protection of trademark. This includes prevention of attribute characteristics like name and a signature. Besides, the Copyright Act, 1957 also protects performances but only in as much as the performer can be categorized under the very limited meaning of the word ‘performer’ under the act. However, what has been presently enacted is rather inadequate still as far as what is acknowledged as novel type of exploitation such as AI technologies and deepfake and so on.
Where such a formal commercialization of identity has not taken place, the current legal regime is deficient in providing adequate protection. Even the ‘performers’ are also protected under the Copyright Act, 1957 but conditionally only. The performers’ rights are provided for under Section 2(qq) and 38 of the Copyright Act but only insofar as the performance by the performers in question, whether they are actors, musicians, dancers or what have you, is concerned and not as personalities.
The Information Technology Act 2000 also provides some rights of law in case of violation of the data theft, misuse of images or defamation. However, the Act fails to provide protection with regards to the unauthorized commercial use of a person’s image. Although the judiciary has used these statutes in significant cases, the present statutory system is still incomplete in the protection of personality rights.
The Indian courts have also delivered some remarkable judgments which recognize personality rights in a decentralized manner. In ICC Development (International) Ltd v Arvee Enterprises,Delhi High Court held that use of personality’s name and image without his permission for business purpose was a case of passing off.In the same way, in D.M. Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v Baby Gift House, the court defended Daler Mehndi’s personality rights under trademarks and passing off statutes. the Delhi High Court held that unauthorized use of a personality’s name and image for commercial purposes could amount to passing off. Similarly,. Unfortunately, these rulings have been done with famous people only; the common man has little to no protection.The origins of the right to individuality and non-interference can be traced back from the principle of the ‘right to privacy’ which formed the foundation to the right Enterprises, the Delhi High Court held that unauthorized use of a personality’s name and image for commercial purposes could amount to passing off. However, these rulings have been limited to famous individuals, and protection for the average person remains largely unaddressed. The roots of recognition of individuality and protection from intrusion can be traced from the advent of the principle of ‘right to be left alone’.
Celebrities gained publicity right involving their privacy right and the law as well as culture has evolved through the cases. Commercial use of images, names and other personal characteristics is possible by law and was established at the start of the twentieth century as the right of publicity. For instance in Haelan Laboratories, Inc. v Topps Chewing Gum, Inc this case laid down the legal foundation for the publicity rights. The constitutional provision is protected under the First Amendment right. Relevantly, in the chewing gum industry Haelan Laboratories and Topps Chewing Gum are the direct rivals. In addition, to boost sales, Haelan Laboratories developed a set of cards which had faces of baseball players and this was an item that had an exclusivity contract for the specific set particular term period where the players were not permitted to issue similar rights to any other gum manufacturer to the Plaintiff. However, the rival company Topps Chewing Gum Inc. through its agents persuaded the athletes to use playersphotographs to sell its own branded chewing gum at the same time of the existence of the above-mentioned contract. In view of the same, the US court of appeal held that the defendants have breached the contract. The defendant’s argument that ‘a man has no legal interest in the publication of his picture other than his right of privacy’ did not wash well with legal authorities and the court held ‘a man has a right in the publicity value of his photograph, and that such a grant may validly be made without an accompanying transfer of a business or of anything else’. Therefore, the right of publicity was established as an important right.
Publicity rights for celebrities is rather new in United Kingdom and it has emerged recently. In the past, the law of England especially the common law offered scant regard to privacy besides the defamation laws.The turning point was marked in the early part of this century in the case of Douglas v. Hello! Ltd which was an act of leaking photographs of a celebrity wedding. This case served as a turning point because it showed the necessity to shield a person from actions of media. They said this being so everyone including the celebrities has a constitutional right to privacy when it comes to some aspects of their lives. Then the European Convention on Human Rights enacted by the Human Rights Act, 1998 was influential. The Article 8 of the Convention was turned into the main focus for privacy rights and it states that ‘respect for private and family life’ is an important statute.
In Europe, personality rights are correlated to human dignity. Germany enjoys a Legal environment enshrined in the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) within which personality rights have a constitutional Mandate. France also has personality rights which are further provided under civil code especially part two; it states that no one should be utilized in any manner to benefit other people.
France also provides the same protection for personality rights under the provision of Civil Codeof the country. The French law focuses on the personality right of a human being and does not permit the use of a person’s image for any purpose, commercial as well as non-commercial without the consent of the person depicted. The personality rights have thus always increased the notion of personal dignity in French courts every time claims from people who have been photographed without consent have been upheld.
With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence and deepfake in recent years, the chances of impersonation and misuse of peoples images has become a lot higher. Deepfake technology allows creation of realistic images of people and it is a problem of privacy and personality rights. The possibilities that AI systems have to monitor, analyse, and monetize data about individuals, their voice, images, and behaviour present new legal issues. Today personality rights are not recognized completely in India and misuse in the context of digital area proves that personality rights need more protection in the statutes.
With the new advance technologies like Artificial intelligence and Deep fake technologies, new problems have arisen regarding personality rights protection. AI systems can also mimic the person’s voice, image or likeness and therefore result in the unauthorised production of deepfakes that can be monetized or used for harm. Deepfake that is real albeit fake videos or images can be a violation of the privacy as well as personality rights. For instance, deepfakeinvolving a political leader saying something that he/she may not desire to express will create pecuniary riches to the unauthorized people.The current laws of India do not possess the ability to effectively deal with such problems. As for the IT Act, it offers some relief in circumstances where data has been misused or used to perpetrate cyber defamation, it does not squarely deal with deepfakes or unauthorised use of personal images and likenesses within the digital environment. On the other hand, some jurisdictions such as the United States of America have begun contemplating over how they modify laws in an effort to address the dangers of AI and deepfake. There is a law by California that prohibits the use of deep fake technology in ways that can bring political and commercial benefits a practice that India should follow in a bid to improve their laws.
India’s legal protection for personality rights remains underdeveloped, relying heavily on intellectual property statutes such as trademark and copyright laws. However, as personal identity becomes increasingly commodified, particularly with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfake technologies, a more robust, tailored legal framework is necessary. Drawing lessons from the United States and Europe, India could benefit from a statutory regime specifically focused on personality rights, distinct from existing intellectual property protections. Such a framework would address the growing digital threats posed by AI, which can track, analyze, and commercialize personal data, including biometric information like facial recognition and voice patterns.
AI’s integration into social media and advertising platforms allows the exploitation of personal identities without consent, amplifying concerns about privacy violations. The rise of deepfaketechnology, which generates realistic yet false representations of individuals, further exacerbates these risks. India’s existing legal remedies, found in the Information Technology Act of 2000 and various intellectual property laws, are inadequate for addressing the complexities introduced by these evolving technologies.
The scope of personality rights in India should not remain limited to celebrities but must extend to protect all individuals in today’s digitized world. AI, deepfakes, and data mining technologies continue to erode personal autonomy and dignity. Thus, a more comprehensive legal reform is urgent, as the current fragmented approach falls short in safeguarding against these modern technological threats. A dedicated legal framework is essential to preserve personal identity and privacy in an era where the line between public and private identity is increasingly blurred.
