The Rajnikanth Effect: How 1 Ruling Shaping Landscape Of Celebrity Rights

What do Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Jackies shroff, Rajnikanth and now Dr Devi Shetty have in common. Yes, they are all celebrities in their own field, but one interesting subject of law which has given them the edge over others is that now they all are protected by Personality Rights. We have all heard saying at least once from our parents and peers that build a personality of your own and now the same personality and the persona which you create around yourself can be trademarked, copyrighted, protected by the law of torts and Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. Courts are now granting relief to celebrities to protect their identity being used without due acknowledgement and misused for commercial gains by third parties without taking permission of use.

So, let’s understand personality rights as to what it encompasses. It is the inherent right of every human being to control the commercial use of his or her identity and use this legal right if infringed by unpermitted use which can damage the commercial value of this brand image, repute and human identity. It can be related to his voice, likeness or other identifiers of persona with whom he is being recognized as a known personality. Personality rights help one to control the commercial use of their name, image, and personal attributes. They are also known as the right to publicity.

Personality rights are prevalent world over and not only in India, to name Scarlett Johansson, a Hollywood actor, had accused OpenAI of using her voice without permission in its AI model, GPT-4o named "Sky”, which sounded like her own and made her to enforce her personality rights.

It all began in in 2015, when the Madras High Court ruled in favour of actor Rajnikanth in a case against the producers of the movie Main Hoon Rajnikanth, where in the court established that celebrities have personality rights. The court ruled that the producers infringed on Rajnikanth's personality rights by using his name, image, and dialogue style in the movie in derogatory manner which amounted to infiltration of Rajnikanth's personality right.

The ruling in the Rajnikanth case has been cited as an important precedent in subsequent cases of Amitabh Bachan, Jacki shroff, Anil Kapoor followed by Dr Devi Shetty the first Doctor to enforce his personality rights.

Recently in Anil Kapoor versus Simply Life India and Ors, the Delhi High Court restrained the defendants from “utilising his name, image, voice, likeliness or personality to make any merchandise, ringtones, or in any manner misuse the plaintiff's name, voice and other elements by using technological tools such as artificial intelligence, face morphing, GIFs, either for monetary gains or for creating any videos for commercial purpose so as to result in violation of plaintiff's rights.”

Now to join the list is Dr. Devi Shetty, the renowned cardiologist in India and admired by all for his medical excellence in heart surgeries and his work at Narayana Hrudyalaya has sought relief from Delhi High Court for protecting his personality rights against individuals and entities accused of misusing Dr. Shetty's name and image for unauthorized commercial purposes, including promoting unverified health products. The court has issued orders for prohibiting the use of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and deepfake tools, to replicate or manipulate his persona, name, image, likeness, or other personal attributes without his explicit consent for commercial gains. I am very much confident in the coming days many celebrities will invoke their personality rights and the right to publicity.

To conclude, personality rights are not statutory in India, but they have become more significant due to the increasing number of celebrity endorsements and commercialization. The courts have come down heavily on defendants who are using a celebrity status person’s name, voice, dialogue, image in an illegal manner that too for commercial purposes without his consent and now with AI things will be more interesting and challenging for enforcing these rights in the coming days.

(The author is the Head of Legal & IPR at Resolute Group and the Founder of Resolute4IP)