JUDICIAL CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS STRENGTHENING PERSONALITY RIGHTS VIS-A-VIS AMITABH BACHCHAN VS RAJAT NAGI AND OTHERS, 2022

Abstract

People in India are heavily influenced by celebrity-endorsed products. So it is not surprising that their consumption in regular households occurs, whether the product is an affordable daily-use item like an energy drink promoted by Indian cricketer Virat Kohli or an expensive one like gold or diamonds. In a country like India people worship celebrities like actors, cricket players, or even politicians as “larger than life” figures. A person’s right to their personality and image is their ability to manage how their persona in the form of their voice, signature, likeness, appearance, silhouette, feature, face, expression, gesture, mannerism, and distinctive character etc is used and commercialised.

Personality rights are the rights of a person related to his or her personality which can be protected under the right to privacy or as property of a person. An individual’s personality is a means by which one individual recognizes other and identifies his place in the society. 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. A large list of unique personal attributes contributes 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. This paper is an attempt to study the judicial contribution towards the protection and strengthening of personality rights and at the same time what new challenges may occur in protecting them.