PERSONALITY RIGHTS

NEWS: The Delhi High Court issued notices in a personality rights case involving Salman Khan after a foreign AI voice-generation platform moved to lift an interim injunction restraining the unauthorised use of his name, image, and voice.

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).
• Trademarks Act, 1999: Section 14 prohibits trademarks that falsely imply association with a living person or someone deceased within 20 years, without consent.
• Copyright Act, 1957: It grants moral rights to authors and performers to prevent distortion or misuse of their work.
• Information Technology Act, 2000: Section 66C provides punishment for identity theft involving the misuse of another person’s electronic identity or credentials