Rapid Fire
Personality Rights in India
- 02 Feb 2026
- 3 min read
Recently, the Delhi High Court issued notices in a case involving Salman Khan’s personality rights, after a foreign Artificial Intelligence(AI) voice-generation platform sought to vacate an interim injunction protecting his name, image and voice from unauthorised use.
Personality Rights
- About: Personality Rights protect an individual’s public persona, like name, voice, image, and mannerisms, as part of their broader right to privacy or property. It grants control over the commercial use of one’s name, image, or likeness.
- Types:
- Right of Publicity: Protecting an individual’s image and likeness from unauthorized commercial use, akin to trademark rights.
- Right to Privacy: Safeguarding against public representation of one’s personality without consent.
- Constitutional and Legal Basis:
- Article 21: Right to life and personal liberty, including privacy (K.S. Puttaswamy case, 2017).
- Copyright Act, 1957: It grants moral rights to authors and performers to prevent distortion or misuse of their work.
- Trademarks Act, 1999: Section 14 prohibits trademarks that falsely imply association with a living person or someone deceased within 20 years, without consent.
- Information Technology Act, 2000: Section 66C provides punishment for identity theft involving the misuse of another person’s electronic identity or credentials.
- Key Judgements: In the Aishwarya Rai Bachchan case (2025), the Delhi High Court restrained unauthorised impersonation, misuse of her name or image, and the circulation of AI-generated manipulated content.
- Courts balance personality rights with freedom of trade and expression, allowing artistic or commercial use only when it does not mislead the public or imply endorsement. Further, foreign entities cannot invoke Article 19 rights in India.
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