What are Personality Rights?

Q What is the context  ?

A The Delhi High Court recently passed an interim order to prevent the unlawful use of a megastar’s name, image and voice.

Q What did the HC say?

A 

• The court, through its order, restrained persons at large from infringing the personality rights of the actor.

Q Why are we discussing this?

A 

• Celebrities are protected from commercial misuse of their name and personality.
• However, there have been instances where the consumers are misled owing to false advertisements or endorsements by such personalities.
• Due to such cases, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has made a notification in 2022 to keep a check on misleading adverts and endorsements of consumer products by imposing a penalty on the endorser.

Q What are Personality Rights?

A 

• Personality rights refer to the right of a person to protect his/her personality under the right to privacy or property.
• These rights are important to celebrities as their names, photographs or even voices can easily be misused in various advertisements by different companies to boost their sales.
• Therefore, it is necessary for renowned personalities/celebrities to register their names to save their personality rights.
• A large list of unique personal attributes contribute to the making of a celebrity.
• All of these attributes need to be protected, such as name, nickname, stage name, picture, likeness, image and any identifiable personal property, such as a distinctive race car.

Correlation with publicity rights

• Personality rights are different from publicity rights.
• Publicity rights are governed by statutes like the Trade marks Act 1999 and the Copyright Act 1957.

Q What are various types of personality rights ?

A 

• Personality rights consist of two types of rights-

1. Right of publicity: It is the right to keep one’s image and likeness from being commercially exploited without permission or contractual compensation, which is similar (but not identical) to the use of a trademark;
2. Right to privacy: It is the right to not have one’s personality represented publicly without permission.

• However, under common law jurisdictions, publicity rights fall into the realm of the ‘tort of passing off’.
• Passing off takes place when someone intentionally or unintentionally passes off their goods or services as those belonging to another party.
• Often, this type of misrepresentation damages the goodwill of a person or business, resulting in financial or reputational damage.

Q Does the use of a name on the internet affect personality rights?

A 

• The Delhi High Court in 2011 made an observation in the case of Arun Jaitley vs Network Solutions Private Limited and Ors.
• In this case, former finance minister filed a suit seeking permanent injunction against the defendants from misuse and immediate transfer of the domain name www.arunjaitley.com.
• The Court stated that the popularity or fame of individual will be no different on the internet than in reality.