Not long ago, the idea that a person’s style, voice, or even a famous way may require legal safety, it may look distant. But a wave of recent cases by film data including Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Karan Johar and Nagarjuna shows a significant change in the legal discourse. These celebrities have pressurized the Delhi High Court to accept and implement personality rights, underlining the increasing recognition of identity as a valuable legal property in the digital age.
Today’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) -Increase in personality rights in the environment is largely responsible for the increasing misuse of individuals of celebrities famous by various unknown institutions, which can incite all important reputed damage and inappropriate ridicule.
Whereas most celebrities including Aishwarya and Abhishek sought safety of this right by stopping various institutions from misbehaving various institutions to manipulate various institutions through unauthorized sales, vulgar, dislocation, or manufacture of various institutions, and sought safety of this right by stopping various institutions, and AI-Jasucian chatbots, Jauhar’s construction, Jauhar’s construction, evacuate through Jauhar.
In the case of Johar, Meta (which operates platforms such as Instagram and Facebook) and Google opposed the takedown, arguing that some competition content formed carications, lampooning, satire and parody. He said that these forms of expression are recognized exceptions to the enforcement of personality rights, and that providing relief may lead to potentially comprehensive litigation for floods. Despite the opposition, Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora directed these social media middlemen to take more than 100 URLs, concluding that the unauthorized use of a celebrity personality to create pornographs, social media posts and videos tarnishes their goodwill.
Johar’s case is not just a win for him, it marks a significant development in the scenario of the expansion of personality rights litigation in India and highlights the shifting trend adopted by social media intermediaries in such controversies. Its free speeches are also implications.
Personality rights and their legal protection
The right to publicity, popularly known as personality rights, refers to unauthorized use of personality characteristics of a person, such as their name, image, voice, equality, or other specific personal characteristics, refers to a person’s right, for business gains, for business gains. These rights are two times and include the right to protect someone’s image from the right to professional exploitation and privacy, which gives the right to someone to leave alone.
However, there is no expressed law and legislative enactment, rules or policy to protect personality rights, individuals can seek security from fundamental rights under Article 19 (1) (A) and Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which protects the right to live with freedom of expression and right to live with dignity. Additionally, intellectual property rights law offers and offer security measures for interests related to personality.
The interests of the famous personalities are conservation as an extension of moral rights under the Copyright Act, 1957. Sections 38, 38A, and 38B of the 1957 Act gave artists the right to receive credits and recognized as authors of their performance.
Section 38, which belongs to the rights of artists, grants two types of rights. The first of the double rights is the right to exclusive performance under Section 38A. This provision suggests that an artist has a “exclusive rights” to prevent a visual recording of sound recording or their performance and others from circulating its live performance.
Breeding, using the work of the artist is a violation of communication without performing without their consent.
The second of such rights is moral right, including the right to Attention and Integrity under Section 38B. This section suggests that artists have the right to be identified as the creators of their work and are prejudiced to prevent or their reputation for any deformation, mutation, or other amendment of their performance.
The Trademark Act, 1999, also gives a degree of security for personality rights. Section 2 (M) of the Act, especially in the definition of ‘Mark’, includes ‘name’. Additionally, the general law rights of the owner of Section 27 Trade Marks recognize to take action to take action as services provided to another person or services provided to another person to pass their goods/services against any person.
Justice of personality rights in India
With the growth of the entertainment industry in India, the concept of personality rights has gained important prominence, which is closely associated with the developed belief of the right to privacy.
The emergence of personality rights was inspired by the Supreme Court in the Landmark Case R. Rajagopal vs State of Tamil Nadu (1994), which is usually known as the Auto Shankar case, where the court balanced a person’s right to control the professional use of its identity with the right to publicity of a publicly available records. “A citizen has the right to protect the confidentiality of education between his own, his family, marriage, purchase, maternity, child-bear and other matters. In other cases no one can publish anything about the above matters, whether he is true or otherwise more appreciated or critical. If he does so, he will violate the right to that person’s privacy.”
In 2003, Delhi HC at ICC Development (International) Limited vs. Arvee Enterprises clarified the scope of personality rights by the ruling that they apply to especially living individuals or identityable aspects of their personality and thus excluding non-living institutions.
In DM Entertainment Private Limited vs Baby Gift House and ORS (2010), Delhi HC defined its scope, protecting the personality rights of singer Daler Mehndi. The court ruled that the right to campaign protects individuals from unauthorized use of individuality, including their name, image, voice and other specific qualities. It is also believed that such unauthorized use can lead to improper business benefits to others, which may cause a person’s personality rights to violate.
Thirteen years later, Anil Kapoor vs. Simple Life India and ORS (2023), while protecting the rights of Bollywood actors, faced important concerns about AI’s possible misuse and image rights, privacy and its important aspects on the commercial interests of famous persons. Preventing the institution from using Kapoor’s personality by employing Deepfeck and AI, the judge noticed that a celebrity supports as a major source of livelihood, and any quality of it is illegal without consent.
Earlier this year, Delhi HC, expressed serious concern about the misuse of technology by evil websites, protecting the personality rights of Sadhaguru Jaggi Vasudev, founder of Delhi HC, Isha Foundation. The court said that these platforms often work under the cloak of privacy, which makes it very difficult for the victims to identify operators or find objectionable material.
Global perspective on personality rights
While India still lacks a dedicated statutory structure for personality rights, the US has a well -structured and strong legal framework for the protection of personality rights that derive from both general law and legal protection. In particular, about the federal law, the Lanham Act provides some measures for commercial misuse, especially about the issues of false support.
Most of the states have also added to specific laws of law protecting the right to publicity. For example, Section 3344 of California’s Civil Code states that no person, without consent, uses equality for another person’s name, voice, signature, picture, or a business purpose, is a violation. Similarly, personality rights are recognized under the Tenasi Code, which is accompanied by specific rights for post -mortem personality rights.
In France, Article 9 of his Civil Code protects a person’s right to image, it extends it to include a person’s name, voice, and other identifiable characteristics. In Germany, the concept of “General Rights of Personality” lies in the Constitution (Article 1 and 2), involving depiction of one’s personality and control over business exploitation.
As more and more public figures want legal support for unauthorized use of their individual characteristics, courts are moving fast to fill the legal vacuum by relying on the constitutional security of secrecy and dignity, and are adopting general law principles for modern threats. This developing jurisprudence not only protects personal identity from individual exploitation, but also redefines the balance between personal rights, creative expression and technological innovation in the world with rapid digitization.
But as shown in Johar’s case, such a case may also have a implication for satire and comedy, and by expansion, by free speech. Senior Advocate Vivek Sood and Advocate Vaishali R Mittal, Senior Partner in Anand and Anand, urged a careful, balanced approach that protects the identity without reducing free expression.
“In this era of social media affected people, where individuals are the benefic centers, there is a natural expansion of the traditional concept of IPR to protect personality rights. But the excess of this property will affect the free speech of others to cross the same area. Therefore, the safety of personality rights is to be carefully cured …” Sood said.
Mittal also echoed the need for balance. “A balanced approach ensures that while the personality of a celebrity is not misused to benefit, space -free expression and socially valuable discourse.” Why famous celebrities are rapidly contacting Delhi HC to protect their personality rights, Mittal said that this is due to the active approach of the court. “Delhi has become a place of choice, roughly due to the court receptivity and the track record in giving quick and effective relief in intellectual property and technology related matters.”
