Personality Rights In India: An Emerging Branch Of Intellectual Property Law
- IJLLR Journal
- Aug 29
- 1 min read
Tanvi Chadha, Amity Law School, Noida
ABSTRACT
Personality rights, encompassing the right of an individual to control the commercial use of their identity, have emerged as a significant area of legal discourse in India. Traditionally, Indian intellectual property law has dealt with the protection of creative and industrial works, but the growing recognition of a person’s name, image, voice, likeness, and other distinctive attributes as protectable assets reflects an evolving jurisprudence. The Indian judiciary has played a significant role in acknowledging these rights, especially in recent instances involving well-known individuals like Anil Kapoor, Daler Mehndi, Jackie Shroff, and Amitabh Bachchan. These rulings draw attention to the difficulties associated with the unapproved use of celebrity identities, particularly in the era of deepfakes, digital manipulation, and commercial piracy. The paper highlights the lack of codified protection and places personality rights within the context of intellectual property law by looking at these judicial developments. In order to establish personality rights as a crucial and developing area of intellectual property law in India. The paper concludes by advocating for a statutory regime that balances the commercial value of personality rights with constitutional guarantees of free speech and public interest, thereby positioning personality rights as an essential and emerging branch of intellectual property law in India.
Keywords: Personality rights, right of publicity, intellectual property, celebrity rights, digital exploitation.
