Personality Rights At The Intersection Of Indian IP Law

Introduction

Personality rights have become an increasingly important area of Indian intellectual property law in recent years. What was once a limited concern for celebrities trying to stop unauthorized merchandise has now gained wider attention due to the rise of generative artificial intelligence, deepfakes, face-morphing tools, and AI chatbots that can closely imitate a public figure's voice, image, and likeness. Two recent decisions delivered in the first quarter of 2026 — the Bombay High Court's ruling in Shatrughan Prasad Sinha v. John Doe & Ors. and the Delhi High Court's order in Sonakshi Sinha v. Character Technologies Inc. & Ors., show both the importance of the issue and the readiness of Indian courts to grant injunctive relief against the digital misuse of celebrity persona.

These 2026 rulings build upon a line of earlier landmark decisions that first recognized personality rights as a distinct, enforceable interest in Indian law. In Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewelers, the Delhi High Court defined a “celebrity”. In this case, the Defendant unlawfully exploited the photograph of Mr. Amitabh Bachchan and Ms. Jaya Bachchan, taken specifically for use in endorsing Plaintiff's jewelry product for his own jewelry product.
The court observed that “The right to control the commercial use of human identity is the right to publicity" and defined a “famous or well-known person” as, a person who is famous or a well-known person and is merely a person that many people talk about or are aware of. When granting a permanent injunction against the defendant, the court observed that ‘a renowned person's name can be used in advertisements for business purposes, but only with that person's consent and approval about the occasion, setting, and substance of the advertisement. Similarly, in Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors., the Delhi High Court issued an injunction protecting the actor’s name, image, likeness, voice, manner of speaking, gestures, signatures and his iconic catchphrase “Jhakaas” against unauthorized exploitation, including through AI-generated deepfakes, ringtones, and merchandise. In this case, the Delhi High Court recognized exceptions of free speech, right to information, satire, authentic parody and news to the right to publicity, however, it noted that if “the same crosses a line, and results in tarnishment, blackening or jeopardises the individual’s personality, or attributes associated with the said individual, it would be illegal.” These decisions formed the doctrinal bedrock on which the 2026 rulings rest, confirming that Indian courts treat personality attributes as proprietary interests deserving broad equitable protection.

In the Shatrughan Sinha case, the Bombay High Court restrained the defendants operating fake social media accounts, selling unauthorized merchandise, and generating AI-driven memes, GIFs, deepfakes, and pornographic morphs from any commercial or personal exploitation of the actor-politician's name, voice, signature phrase ("Khamosh"), and persona ("Shotgun"). The Bombay High Court expressly recognized Sinha's unique manner of delivering the dialogue "Khamosh" and his iconic screen name "Shotgun" as protectable personality attributes inseparably associated with him.  Interestingly, these recognition of rights do not relate to the underlying work i.e. the cinematograph film, the dialogues etc., copyright in which is owned by the producer of the film, however it is the delivery of the performance, wherein the performance is fixed in the form of the cinematograph film, copyright in which is also owned by the producer. The enforcement is of rights emanating from the performance, the likeness of the actor, and the attributes of the actor, which are independent of what is embodied in performances and is a distinctive element of the actor.

Approximately a month later, on March 20, 2026, the Delhi High Court in the Sonakshi Sinha case extended similar protection against AI chatbot platforms (including Character.AI and Janitor AI) and a range of e-commerce sellers, directing takedown of the infringing URLs within 36 hours of receipt. Together, these decisions confirm that personality attributes are now recognized as proprietary interests that merit prompt equitable protection.

Nature of Personality Rights as a Common Law Right

Despite their growing importance, personality rights in India remain a common law right. There is no specific statute that sets out the right of publicity or the right of an individual to control the commercial use of his or her identity. The doctrine has instead developed gradually through judicial decisions, drawing on two related sources: the constitutional right to privacy and dignity under Article 21, and the common law tort of passing off. As recent judicial articulation confirms, Indian courts treat personality rights as proprietary interests grounded in the right to privacy and the right to protect their personality attributes from being commercially exploited, and the protection of one's image from unauthorized commercial use is often considered as a tort of passing off which comes under the ambit of IP law.

This common law origin has an important consequence that is sometimes overlooked in pleadings, arguments and reasoning. Personality rights do not arise from any statute, a party aggrieved by their violation cannot, strictly speaking, rely on the statutory remedy of trade mark infringement under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 to enforce the right as a personality right. The appropriate cause of action is passing off being the common law counterpart of statutory infringement, which protects the goodwill and reputation an individual has built up in his or her identity, and which lies at the core of the right of publicity.

The Infringement vs. Passing Off Distinction

The distinction between infringement and passing off is basic to Indian IP law and is particularly relevant in the personality rights context. Trade mark infringement is purely a statutory cause of action: it requires a registered mark and a violation of the owner's exclusive statutory rights. Passing off, by contrast, is a common law action that protects unregistered goodwill and reputation against misrepresentation. It traces its origin to sixteenth-century England, with the earliest recorded case being Southern v. How. The tort was initially treated as a subspecies of the tort of deceit, requiring proof of an actual falsehood and an intention to injure. As Lord Diplock articulated in Erven Warnink BV v. J. Townend & Sons (Hull) Ltd & Anor. and as restated by the Lord Oliver in Reckitt &. Colman v. Borden, the essential elements of the modern tort are goodwill, misrepresentation, and damage — the “Classical Trinity.” In India, this common law action is expressly preserved by Section 27(2) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, which saves the right of any person to take action against another for passing off goods or services as those of another person.

 Because a personality right is itself a common law right, hence, its violation cannot, on its own, give rise to a claim of trade mark infringement. The correct framing is passing off, based on the misrepresentation that the use in question is associated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the personality concerned, and on the resulting damage to that personality's reputation and goodwill.

That said, the distinction is not absolute. Where a particular element of a personality has been registered as a trade mark, for example, a stylized signature, a distinctive logo, or a catchphrase registered as a word mark, infringement may also be pleaded in relation to that registered element, alongside a passing off claim covering the wider set of personality attributes. This two-track approach reflects the broader structure of Indian trade mark law, in which registered and unregistered rights exist side by side.

Judicial Trends

The two 2026 decisions discussed above illustrate how Indian courts are presently approaching the interaction between statutory and common law rights in the personality rights context. In the Shatrughan Sinha case, the suit was instituted as a commercial intellectual property rights infringement action, with the plaintiff also expressly pleading the tort of passing off in respect of his personality attributes. The Bombay High Court, drawing on the Delhi High Court's decision in Arun Jaitley v. Network Solutions Private Limited, reasoned that a sufficiently well-known personal name may also constitute a mark of origin and fulfil the criterion of a trade mark, attracting protection under Section 27(2) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, a provision which, tellingly, preserves common law rights of action for passing off. The Court simultaneously invoked the tort of passing off, the moral rights of performers under Section 38B of the Copyright Act, 1957, and right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution, to support its injunction. The drawing together statutory, common law, copyright and constitutional strands reflects the layered character of personality protection in India and the willingness of courts to deploy each available source of right in aid of a comprehensive remedy.

The Delhi High Court's order in the Sonakshi Sinha is also relevant here. Building on the line of authority that includes Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India and Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf v. Peppy Store, the Court anchored its reasoning expressly in the violation of "personality and publicity rights" and in the unauthorized commercial exploitation of the plaintiff's persona.

The broader trend is clear: Indian courts are increasingly willing to grant injunctive relief against AI-enabled misuse of celebrity identity. As the jurisprudence develops, careful attention to the distinct juridical foundations of infringement and passing off in pleadings will help consolidate a coherent doctrinal framework for the right.

However, it is equally important to acknowledge that Indian courts have not granted personality rights protection in every case. The jurisprudence recognizes that a threshold level of public recognition or celebrity status is required before a claim to personality or publicity rights can succeed. In ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises, the Delhi High Court held that the right of publicity “has evolved from the right of privacy and can inhere only in an individual or in any indicia of an individual’s personality like his name, personality trait, signature, voice, etc.,” and that non-living entities such as corporations cannot claim personality rights, as such an extension would be violative of Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. More significantly, in Gautam Gambhir v. D.A.P. & Co. & Anr. the Delhi High Court refused to grant an injunction to the well-known cricketer against a restaurant using his name in its tagline, holding that there was no evidence of public confusion, misrepresentation, or commercial misappropriation of his persona or loss of goodwill in his industry as a result, particularly where the defendant had a bona fide right to use his own name. These decisions collectively suggest that the right is not absolute: a degree of public notoriety, identifiable persona, and demonstrable commercial harm or misrepresentation must exist before equitable relief can be granted.

Conclusion

Globally, business models for licensing likeness and voice are emerging. Celebrities, instead of filing lawsuits, are licensing elements of their personality rights. For instance, the singer Grimes has proposed a profit share for those using a synthetic version of her voice in songs. Further, reports suggest that Meta has compensated celebrities to use their likeness and voice for chatbots. In India, the first quarter of 2026 has reaffirmed that personality rights occupy an important, if still evolving, place within the Indian intellectual property landscape. Indian courts have demonstrated a readiness to deploy the full spectrum of equitable remedies, including dynamic injunctions and directions facilitated through government intermediaries, to address deepfakes, AI-generated morphs, and unauthorized commercial exploitation of identity. Going forward, the coherence of this jurisprudence will depend on doctrinal precision in how such claims are framed: as passing off actions rooted in the common law protection of goodwill, reputation and persona, with trade mark infringement claims confined to those discrete personality elements such as signatures, logos, or catchphrases, that have been duly registered under the Trade Marks Act, 1999. Where appropriate, the moral rights of performers under Section 38B of the Copyright Act, 1957 and the constitutional right to privacy under Article 21 may be invoked in the alternative. As AI-generated content continues to proliferate, a clear and disciplined doctrinal framework is more than an academic concern, it is the foundation on which durable protection of personality in the digital age must rest.

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