Context: Recently, the High Court of Delhi passed an order to prevent the unlawful use of Amitabh Bachchan’s name, image and voice and asked to restrain from infringing the personality rights of the actor.

Personality Rights

• Personality rights are the rights of an individual to protect their personality under the right to privacy or property. 

• Personality rights are particularly important to celebrities and well-known personalities because their names, images or voices can be easily misused by various companies to advertise and boost the sales of their products.

• A number of unique personality traits or attributes contribute to the making of a celebrity such as names, nicknames, stage names, images, and other identifiable personal properties and all of these traits must be protected. 

• Therefore, it has become important for renowned personalities or celebrities to register their names to save their personality rights.

• As a result, personality rights are seen as property rights rather than personal rights.

Personality Rights in India

• At present, there is no statute or law that protects personality rights in India. 

• However, Article 21 of the Constitution of India under the right to privacy and right to publicity makes reference to the protection of personality rights.

• Other statutory provisions protecting personality rights include the Copyright Act, 1957.

• As per the Act, moral rights are attributed only to authors and performers which include actors, singers, musicians, dancers, etc. 

• The provisions of the Act mandate that the Authors or the Performers have the right to be given credit or claim authorship of their work and also have a right to restrain others from causing any kind of damage to their work.

• Personality Rights are also accorded some degree of protection under Section 14 of the Indian Trademarks Act, 1999, which puts restrictions on the use of personal names and representations.

• Further, the Delhi High Court in its judgement in Arun Jaitley vs Network Solutions Private Limited and Ors Case (2011) observed that the popularity or fame of an individual will be no different on the internet than in reality. 

• The court had also stated that the name also falls in the category wherein besides it being a personal name it has also attained distinctive indicia of its own. 

• Therefore, the name due to its distinctive nature coupled with its popularity in various fields would be treated as a well-known personal name/mark under the Trademark Law which makes sure that the individual gets the right to prevent others from using this name unjustifiably.

Personality rights v/s Publicity rights

• Both Personality rights and Publicity rights differ from each other in various aspects.

• Personality rights mainly consist of two types of rights namely,

• The Right of Publicity or the right to protect one’s image from being commercially exploited without permission or compensation similar to the use of a trademark.

• The Right to Privacy or the right to not have one’s personality represented publicly without permission. 

• But, as per various provisions, Publicity rights come under the scope of “tort of passing off”.

• “Passing off” is when individuals intentionally or unintentionally pass off their goods or services as those belonging to another party. 

• Such misrepresentation of goods and services impacts the goodwill of a person or business, resulting in financial or reputational damage. 

• Publicity rights are mainly governed by laws and regulations such as the Trademarks Act 1999 and the Copyright Act 1957.

Impact of false advertisements on consumer rights

• The misuse of well-known personalities to promote false advertisements not just violates the Personality rights of celebrities/well-known personalities but also affects consumer rights.

• Acknowledging the challenge, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has made a notification to check such misleading endorsements.

Road Ahead

• There has been an increase in the number of instances where endorsements have misused the name and fame of celebrities due to the increasing rate of commercialisation of such endorsements because of their huge value and potential. 

• This issue requires immediate intervention by various governing bodies and the judiciary to not just protect the Personality rights of individuals but also the interests of the consumers who get influenced by such ads.