Copyright infringement not intended

In News

• The Delhi High Court passed a provisional order to stop the unlawful use of Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan’s name, image and voice.
  • The court prohibited persons at large from violating the personality rights of the actor.

About Personality rights

• Personality rights refer to the right of a person to protect his/her personality under the right to privacy or property.
  • Personality rights recognize a person as a physical and spiritual-moral being and guarantee his enjoyment of his sense of existence.
  • Personality right is the right of an individual, to control the use and commercialization of their identity which is their personage in the form of voice, signature, likeness, appearance, silhouette, feature, face, expression, gesture, mannerism, and distinctive character.
• Why Important?
  • 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, renowned personalities/celebrities must register their names to save their personality rights.
  • Several unique personal qualities contribute to the making of a celebrity. All of these features need to be protected, such as name, nickname, stage name, picture, likeness, image and any identifiable personal property.
• Personality rights consist of two types of rights;
  • The right of publicity, or 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.
  • The right to privacy or the right to not have one’s personality represented publicly without permission.

Legal Status in India

• 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.
• Publicity rights are governed by statutes like the Trade marks Act 1999 and the Copyright Act 1957.
  • The Indian Copyright Act does not define the word ‘personalities’ or ‘celebrities’. However, the Delhi High Court in the case of Titan Industries Ltd. vs M/S Ram kumar Jewellers in 2012 defined the term ‘celebrity’ as a person who is famous or merely a person who many people talk about or know about.
• The Delhi High Court in 2011 observed in the case of Arun Jaitley vs Network Solutions Private Limited and Ors., in which the Court stated that the “name also falls in the category of Publicity rights”.

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