The Delhi High Court recently passed an interim order to prevent the unlawful use of Bollywood Star Amitabh Bachchan's name, image, and voice.

The court restrained people from infringing the personality rights of the actor.

What are Personality Rights?

Personality Rights refer to the right of a person to protect his or her personality under the right to privacy or property.

These rights are even significant for celebrities as their names, photographs or even voices are easily misused by different companies to boost their sales.

Personality rights consist of two types of rights:-

  • The right to keep one's image from being commercially exploited without permission or any contractual permission.
  •  The right to privacy also extends the right of an individual to not have one's personality represented publicly without permission.

Statutes like the Trademarks Act, 1999 and the Copyrights Act, 1957 govern publicity rights.

In such events of breach of personality rights of an individual,

  • The consumer is either misled by false advertisements leading to a loss of trust among consumers.
  • It also leads to a violation of the privacy of the consumer.

There is no specific legislation in India to protect image or personality rights. Through several efforts, Articles 19 and 21 of the Indian Constitution have been regarded as the inherent part of the right to privacy. Furthermore, image or personality rights are a form of intellectual property rights which can continue to remain enforced even after the death of the individual.

Nonetheless, the right to privacy continues to remain the foundation of all other rights. It should be respected all over and by everyone.

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References:

  • www.thehindu.com
  • insightsias.com

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