Personality Rights In India: A Doctrine Reserved For The Famous
- IJLLR Journal
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Manmeet Kaur, Amity University Noida
Vedant Solanki, Amity University Noida
ABSTRACT
Personality rights, which include the right to control one’s name, image, likeness, voice, and other personal characteristics, are theoretically founded upon the universal values of privacy, dignity, and autonomy. Nevertheless, in the Indian context, the actual enforcement of personality rights is characterised by a remarkable strangeness: personality rights litigation is virtually monopolised by celebrities. Although there is no codified statutory regime to regulate personality or publicity rights, the Indian judiciary has consistently granted broad injunctive relief to celebrities, whereas similar claims by non-celebrities are practically non-existent. This paper integrates a close examination of constitutional jurisprudence, intellectual property, and landmark judicial decisions with a socio-economic and digital media analysis. It scrutinises leading cases such as R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, D.M. Entertainment v. Baby Gift House, Titan Industries v. Ramkumar Jewellers, and recent celebrity cases involving Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. These cases demonstrate a clear judicial trend of conflating celebrity identity with commercial property, thus giving precedence to market value. This paper contends that the jurisprudence of personality rights in Indian law has become a structurally celebrity-centric system because of three interrelated reasons: the commercialisation of personas in endorsement-based markets, judicial standards that give greater weight to recognizability and “drawing power,” and the enforcement disparities that flow from unequal access to legal resources and platform responsiveness. Furthermore, the advent of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and deepfakes has further exacerbated judicial anxieties, which in turn has solidified the protection of famous personas. This paper seeks to explore this phenomenon and pose a primary research question: why is personality rights litigation in India dominated by celebrities?
