When Success Meets Publicity Rights: Navigating the Extent of Personality Protection in India
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INTRODUCTION
The last few years has seen a sudden rise in the enforcement of a ‘newly discovered’ phenomenon of personality rights. Celebrities, one after the other, have been approaching the Courts to enforce their rights against deepfakes and unauthorized use of certain aspects of their personality. While earlier the trend of enforcing personality rights was limited to the celebrities alone, but recently, people from distinct spheres of lives have begun to approach the Court to enforce this right. However, there are no strict statutory provisions in place for either defining the contours of this right or for the protection of these rights. In fact, instead, these rights are being enforced purely based on judicial interpretation. Therefore, the scope and extent of protection and the jurisprudence with respect to personality rights is ever evolving. Newer judgments have been trying to clearly define the contours of the common law pertaining to personality rights. Considering the recent developments, wherein a girl securing All India Rank 1 in a competitive examination was refused from recognition of her personality rights and an online educator was granted this right, this article makes an attempt to map all the developments pertaining to personality rights and analyse what is the law of personality rights in India as of date.
PERSONALITY RIGHTS & THE AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE
The concept of personality rights has largely stemmed out of the American Jurisprudence on ‘publicity rights’, wherein an individual has the right to protect, control, and profit from his/her image, name, or likeness.[i] The US Federal Court in the infamous Topps Chewing Gum case[ii] held that the publicity rights is of relevance for the prominent persons like the actors and the ball-players. This is because they are vulnerable to public exposure and an unauthorized use of their name or photograph could actually result on commercial loss, especially in advertising related matters.
THE BEGINNING OF THE INDIAN JURISPRUDENCE ON PERSONALITY
Indian jurisprudence found its roots from the privacy rights in the Phoolan Devi case,[iii] ultimately expanding into the concept of publicity rights in the ICC case,[iv] which emphasized that the latter rights could not be attributed to non-living entities. The case which solidified the concept of personality rights in the early phase of the Indian jurisprudence on personality rights was the case of Daler Mehndi[v] in 2003, wherein, the plaintiff sued against the use of his name, persona and likeness in toys along with the infringement of his literary and musical works.
Subsequently, Indian courts started protecting the personality rights of various ‘celebrities’, given their status of celebrity. Rajnikanth’s case[vi] forms an important ruling in this regard. This case clearly held that the personality rights vests on those who have attained the status of ‘celebrity’. The Court further held that no proof of falsity, confusion, or deception is required in case that a celebrity is identifiable. This judgment accorded the highest form of protection of personality rights of those celebrities who are identifiable from the defendant’s unauthorized use. The Court here further held that a celebrity is entitled for injunction, if the said celebrity could be easily identified by the use of his name by the others.
THE EXPANSIVE USE OF INTERIM INJUNCTIONS IN INDIA
The post-Covid period has seen a lot of technological advancements, including the rise of Artificial Intelligence as well as an exponential growth in the degree of online content creation. Alongside the above, many celebrities have moved to the court seeking interim injunctions to enforce their ‘personality rights’. These include:
Anil Kapoor moving to the Court to seek interim relief against the unauthorized use of his name, image, voice, likeness, signature, and his popular phrase ‘Jhakaas’, which identifies him distinctively from others;[vii]
Arijit Singh seeking protection of his name, voice, mannerism/manner of singing, photograph, image, likeness, persona, and other attributes of his personality, especially by way of AI-voice cloning;[viii]
Jackie Shroff invoking both Trade Marks Law and Copyright Law to protect the registered trademarks of the actor ‘BHIDU’, ‘Bhidu ka Khopcha’ and ‘JACKIE SHROFF’ against unauthorized use and infringement, as well as to protect against the unauthorized use of his personality which includes his name, image, voice, and other distinctive attributes, including his nicknames like ‘Jackie’ and ‘Jaggu Dada’. Though the Court refused to grant ex-parte ad-interim injunction against the creator of ‘Thug Life’ style videos of Jackie Shroff on social media and held that the videos represented artistic expression which created economic value for the creator of such videos and constituted the right to freedom of speech and expression of the creators;[ix]
Late singer Asha Bhosle invoked Section 38B of the 1957 Act to protect her personality rights against the impacts caused by Artificial Intelligence,[x] etc.
THE RECENT RULINGS OF THE INDIAN COURTS
In the absence of a statute for the protection of personality rights, the Indian High Courts continue to receive a series of applications seeking ex parte and ad interim injunctions to enforce the newly discovered and trending ‘personality rights’. Bollywood and Indian celebrities like Ilaiyaraaja, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Nagarjuna, Kumar Sanu, Akshay Kumar, Karan Johar, Preity Zinta, etc. have all approached the Courts one after the other to enforce these rights. While earlier this list was limited to the actors and singers, now even athletes and sports persons have approached the Court seeking the protection of personality rights. Take for example both veteran and young Indian cricketers like Yuvraj Singh and Abhishek Sharma respectively, who have recently successfully sought rulings in their favour for the enforcement of personality rights. Not only this content creators like Raj Shamani and spiritual leaders like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar have also successfully enforced their rights through the judicial orders.
But a pertinent question that arises here is whether the Courts are actively granting personality rights to all the applicants and petitioners, or have refused any petition as well? And if yes, then why?
This year, the Delhi High Court refused to recognize the personality rights of a minor girl who secured All India Rank 1 in the Common Law Admission Test 2026 and grant her an interim injunction.[xi] In this case, the video of the top scorer, meant for promoting the Plaintiff coaching centre, from which she had studied was allegedly misused by the Defendant coaching centre by using it for spreading defamatory news about her. Given that the defamatory content generated against her had gained a lot of attention and was harming her reputation, she sought the enforcement of her personality rights by way of an interim injunction. However, the Court stated that:
“In case any and every success, or a milestone achieved is held to be sufficient to be raised to the level of a “personality right”, it would lead to absurdity and incongruity. If such interpretation is carried forward, then every aspirant, candidate, student, citizen of this country, who achieves or is declared as a top ranker in every stage of examination, would be entitled to protection of their “personality rights”. Though the Courts have not been able to concisely or precisely define “personality rights”, however, it is prudent to avoid such enlargement and widening of the scope to the levels of incongruity and absurdity. Of course, this is not to say that the individual achievers who may have achieved continuous top rank results over many years in various examinations, received awards in sporting events, musical maestros, artists of repute, business persons recognised globally or countrywide, political or religious leaders and such like persons in other spheres of life, etc. may not have, what may constitute “personality rights”, yet it cannot be a sole or a single instance which would lend credence to a person to agitate violation of “personality rights”. The threshold cannot be brought down to individual events, though, that by itself may also not be a bar and may be assessed or ascertained on a case to case basis.”
Therefore, while the Courts did grant an interim injunction against the defamatory content in circulation against the girl, it refused to recognize her personality rights as mere single academic achievement is not sufficient to confer enforceable personality rights and that the publicity rights arise from commercial exploitation of a persona having independent public recognition, and not otherwise.
Further recently, the Delhi High Court in Alakh Pandey’s case,[xii] clearly noted that the protection under personality rights cannot be invoked to silence the non-commercial works of the nature of satire, parody or caricatures, and that the extent of protection under these rights cannot be too broad.
CONCLUSION
Thus, one may note that the contours of personality rights in India are getting more solidly defined with each passing day. The jurisprudential reasonings are shaping the entire concept and its scope and future judgments shall continue to further intricately define the boundaries of the law on protection of personality rights, till a statutory provision gets introduced for the same.
Dakshita Sharma Katare
Associate
[i] Estate of Elvis Presley v. Rob Russen, 513 F. Supp. 1339.
[ii] Haelan Laboratories v. Topps Chewing Gum, 202 F. 2d 866.
[iii] Phoolan Devi v. Shekhar Kapoor, 1994 SCC OnLine Del 722.
[iv] ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises, 2003 SCC OnLine Del 2.
[v] D.M. Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House, 2010 SCC OnLine Del 4790.
[vi] Shivaji Rao Gaikwad v. Varsha Productions, 2015 SCC OnLine Mad 158.
[vii] Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India, 2023 SCC OnLine Del 6914.
[viii] Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures LLP, 2024 SCC OnLine Del 2445.
[ix] Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf v. Peppy Store, 2024 SCC OnLine Del 3664.
[x] Asha Bhosle v. Mayk Inc, 2025 SCC OnLine Bom 3485.
[xi] Toprankers Edtech Solutions Private Limited v. LPT Edtech Private Limited, 2026 SCC OnLine Del 1772.
[xii] Alakh Pandey v. John Doe(s) and Ors.
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