What is Personality Right under Indian Law?

The Delhi High Court has received a petition from Amitabh Bachchan regarding his personality rights, which include the use of his name, image, and voice. The court accepted Amitabh's plea and ruled that no one may make use of the actor's voice, images, or personality rights.

Justice Navin Chawla noted in his decision that Amitabh is undeniably well-known and frequently appears in commercials.

What is Personality law?

Personality rights, also known as the right of publicity, allow an individual to limit how their name, image, likeness, or other unmistakable identifiers are used for commercial purposes. According to the jurisdiction, the validity of personality rights of publicity may continue to some extent after the death of the individual since they are typically regarded as property rights rather than personal rights.

Usually, a man or woman's personality is involved. It has been determined that its right to privacy offers protection. These rights are extremely crucial for famous people. Because people can and do use these famous people's names or influence for a variety of reasons, including selling goods. The Personality Rights Act requires that the names of famous people be registered in this case.

Personal rights under Indian law

The Indian Constitution's Article 21 safeguards both the right to privacy and the right to publicity. Personal rights are governed by legislation. The law of intellectual property also grants people the right to privacy.

Authors have been given comparable rights under the Copyright Act of 1957. Additionally included are dancers, musicians, singers, and actors.

How is Personality Law addressed?

The common law concepts of property, trespass and intentional tort have given rise to personality rights. Thus, although there are some jurisdictions where some aspects of personality rights are statutory, generally speaking, personality rights are judge-made laws. In some jurisdictions, the line separating publicity rights from privacy rights is blurry, so the term publicity right is typically used. Whether a sizable portion of the public would be led to believe (erroneously) that a commercial agreement had been reached between a plaintiff and a defendant under which the plaintiff agreed to the advertising involving the image or reputation of a famous person is the question that must be answered in a publicity rights case.

A suggestion that the plaintiff has approved or licensed the defendant's products or otherwise has some kind of influence over them is necessary for the misrepresentation to be actionable. This is accomplished through the passing off tort.

As per the reports, Developers of mobile applications are allegedly using Amitabh's voice for the lottery. Additionally, the KBC logo has been improperly used. Amitabh has also urged KBC-related book publishers, T-shirt sellers, and other businesspeople to refrain from using his name, voice, likeness, etc. March of the following year will see a new hearing on the case.