Personality rights in India let a well-known person control the commercial use of their name, photograph, voice, signature and other identifiable traits. There is no single statute that creates these rights; courts have built them from the right to privacy, the right to publicity and existing trademark and passing-off law. In practice this means a celebrity, sportsperson or public figure can stop unauthorised advertisements, fake endorsements, merchandise and increasingly AI-generated deepfakes that exploit their identity for profit.
Through 2025 and 2026 the Delhi High Court in particular has continued to grant injunctions protecting public figures' identities, including against AI-generated images and voice clones. This article explains what personality rights and publicity rights actually cover, where the law comes from, what an ordinary public figure can realistically do when their identity is misused, and where Indian law is still genuinely unsettled.
What are personality rights and publicity rights?
The two terms overlap but are not identical:
- Personality rights protect the dignity and identity of a person, flowing from the constitutional right to privacy under Article 21 (recognised by the nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India in 2017). They guard against misuse that harms reputation or autonomy.
- Publicity rights (sometimes called the "right of publicity") protect the commercial value of a famous identity, the ability to decide who may profit from your name or image.
For a celebrity these two strands usually run together: an unauthorised ad both invades privacy and steals commercial value. The Delhi High Court put the relationship plainly in ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises, 2003 (26) PTC 245, where a promotional campaign offered Cricket World Cup tickets as prizes. The right of publicity, the court said, has evolved from the right of privacy and can inhere only in an individual, or in indicia of an individual's personality such as name, personality trait, signature or voice. It does not inhere in the event that made the individual famous, nor in the corporation that organised that event.
Key takeaway. The right belongs to the person, not to the fame. That single line from ICC v. Arvee decides more disputes than any other proposition in this area. A sponsor, a production house, a league or an agency cannot assert your publicity right for you, and cannot assert one of its own over an event you happened to make famous. If a contract purports to hand your identity to somebody else, read exactly what it licenses and for how long, because a licence is the only route by which anyone else gets to use it.
The two strands usually run together for a celebrity, but they protect different things and come from different places.
Personality rights
These protect the dignity and identity of a person, flowing from the right to privacy under Article 21 as recognised in K.S. Puttaswamy in 2017.
Publicity rights
These protect the commercial value of a famous identity, meaning the ability to decide who may profit from your name or your image.
The right inheres personally
ICC v. Arvee held the right can inhere only in an individual or in indicia of personality, not in the event or the corporation that organised it.
Where does the law come from in India?
India has no dedicated "Personality Rights Act". Protection is assembled from several sources, and a well-drafted plaint usually pleads three or four of them together.
| Source of right | What it protects | Key provision | What you have to show |
|---|---|---|---|
| Constitution | Privacy, dignity, identity | Article 21, as read in K.S. Puttaswamy (2017) | An invasion of informational or decisional privacy |
| Common law (tort) | Passing off; false suggestion of endorsement | Judge-made; applied in Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers (Delhi HC, 26 April 2012) | Goodwill, misrepresentation, damage; identifiability of the person |
| Trade Marks Act, 1999 | Name or signature used as a brand | Section 28 (rights on registration), Section 29 (infringement), Section 27(2) (passing off preserved) | Registration in the relevant class, or goodwill for passing off |
| Copyright Act, 1957 | Performances and the performer's moral rights | Section 38 (performer's right), Section 38A (exclusive rights), Section 38B (moral rights) | That you are the performer and the use is of your performance |
| Information Technology Act, 2000 | Impersonation, identity theft, morphed and intimate images | Section 66C (identity theft), Section 66D (cheating by personation using a computer resource), Section 66E (violation of privacy) | Dishonest or fraudulent use; capture or publication without consent |
| Intermediary rules and blocking powers | Removal of the content itself | Section 79 IT Act read with the Intermediary Guidelines; Section 69A blocking powers | A properly framed notice or a court order the platform can act on |
| Criminal law | Personation, forgery, defamation | Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: Section 318 (cheating), Section 319 (cheating by personation), Section 336 (forgery), Section 356 (defamation) | The ingredients of the specific offence, plus a police complaint |
| Consumer and advertising standards | Misleading endorsements | Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and the ASCI code | That the advertisement misleads consumers about endorsement |
On the criminal side, note that the Indian Penal Code has been replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) and the Code of Criminal Procedure by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), both in force from 1 July 2024. Cheating by personation, formerly Sections 416 and 419 IPC, now sits at Section 319 BNS. Older articles and older police complaints will still quote the IPC numbers; use both when you file, so nothing turns on the numbering.
What exactly can a celebrity protect?
Courts have recognised a broad bundle of identifiable attributes. A famous person can typically seek protection over:
- Name (including stage names and nicknames the public associates with them)
- Photograph, image and likeness
- Voice (including imitations and AI voice clones)
- Signature
- Distinctive style, catchphrases or mannerisms the public links to them
- Caricatures and look-alike performers used to imply endorsement
The list is not theoretical. In Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures LLP, decided by the Bombay High Court on 26 July 2024, the protectable facets pleaded and protected included the singer's name, his voice and vocal style, technique, arrangements and interpretations, his manner of singing, his image and photograph, his signature, caricature and likeness. The court granted ex parte relief and impleaded the unidentified defendants collectively as "Ashok Kumar" or "John Doe". The suit also raised the performer's moral rights under the Copyright Act.
Personality rights and deepfakes
The sharpest battleground today is generative AI. Tools that synthesise a person's face or voice can fabricate endorsements, explicit content or fake political statements at essentially zero cost, and can do it from a few seconds of publicly available footage.
Indian courts have moved quickly. A representative recent example is Gautam Gambhir v. Ashok Kumar/John Doe and Others, CS(COMM) 287/2026, before the Delhi High Court on 25 March 2026, where the plaintiff complained of Instagram accounts publishing AI-generated videos impersonating him, including one in which his face had been digitally superimposed onto that of Mahatma Gandhi and which had crossed twelve lakh views. The suit named the anonymous uploaders as John Doe defendants and impleaded the platform, with a schedule of specific URLs. The pattern repeats across recent matters involving other public figures: identify what you can, plead the rest as Ashok Kumar, bring the platform in, and annex the URL list.
Deadline warning. With deepfakes, the remedy decays by the hour. A synthetic video that has been reposted forty times is forty separate takedown problems, and the reach that determines your damages is built in the first day. Preserve the evidence immediately (full-page captures showing the URL, the account handle, the timestamp and the view count, plus a downloaded copy of the file), then move. Courts assess urgency partly by how fast you came, and a plaintiff who waited weeks will be asked why. Delay also has a doctrinal cost: in Krishna Kishore Singh the court treated the plaintiff's delay as weighing in the balance of convenience against him.
Who actually has these rights?
A key limitation: publicity rights protect identifiable persons whose identity has commercial value. Two recurring questions:
- Do ordinary people have them? Everyone has privacy and dignity rights, and everyone can invoke the IT Act and criminal-law provisions against impersonation, morphing and intimate-image abuse. The commercial publicity right is most clearly enforced for those with public recognition, because the misuse trades on their fame and because the loss is easier to prove. Identifiability is the threshold: the test in false-endorsement cases is whether the public would recognise the person and read the use as an endorsement.
- Do they survive death? This is genuinely unsettled in India, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. The leading discussion is Krishna Kishore Singh v. Sarla A. Saraogi and Others, CS(COMM) 187/2021, decided by the Delhi High Court on 10 June 2021, brought by the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput's father against films said to be based on his son's life. The court examined the posthumous question at length, recorded that there is no express statutory recognition of publicity, personality or celebrity rights in India, and declined the pre-emptive injunction because the plaintiff had not satisfied the three-pronged test. It did, however, direct the defendants to render true accounts of revenue from the films, so that if the plaintiff established at trial that celebrity rights were inheritable and vested in him, the money could be dealt with. In other words: the door was left open, not walked through.
Remedies: what a court can order
| Remedy | What it does | When it is used | Practical note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interim injunction | Immediate order to stop the misuse | Urgent, ongoing harm | Needs prima facie case, balance of convenience and irreparable injury; delay is fatal |
| John Doe (Ashok Kumar) order | Injunction binding unknown or unnamed infringers | Anonymous online uploaders, mass reposting | Lets new infringing posts be taken down without a fresh suit for each defendant |
| Take-down and disclosure directions | Orders platforms and ISPs to remove content and disclose uploader details | Deepfakes and viral misuse | Annex a precise URL schedule; vague prayers produce vague orders |
| Permanent injunction | Final restraint after trial | Established infringement | Years away; the interim stage usually decides the commercial outcome |
| Damages or account of profits | Money compensation, or the infringer's profit | Proven commercial loss or gain | Endorsement rate cards and past licence fees are the usual measure of loss |
| Rendition of accounts | Orders the defendant to disclose revenue earned | Where liability is arguable but not yet established | The middle course adopted in Krishna Kishore Singh when injunction was refused |
| Criminal complaint | Police investigation and prosecution | Fraud, morphing, sexual content, forged endorsement | Sections 66C, 66D and 66E IT Act with Sections 318, 319 and 336 BNS |
The John Doe order is especially important online: it lets a public figure obtain an injunction binding the world at large, including anonymous accounts, so new infringing posts can be removed quickly without naming each defendant. Almost every recent AI-impersonation matter has been framed this way.
Common mistake. Sending an angry post or a public statement instead of a preserved evidence file and a lawyer's notice. Publicly calling out a fake endorsement tells the uploader to delete the post, which destroys your proof, and tells the algorithm to spread it, which increases your damage. Capture first, notify second, publicise last, if at all.
How does this connect to trademark and brand law?
For many public figures the strongest, most durable protection is registering their name or signature as a trademark under the Trade Marks Act, 1999. A registered mark gives clear statutory rights under Sections 28 and 29 and makes enforcement faster than relying on common-law passing off alone, because you begin with a certificate rather than with the task of proving goodwill from scratch. Section 27(2) preserves the passing-off action for unregistered names, which is what most people are left with, and it is a heavier evidentiary lift. This overlap between identity protection and brand protection is why personality-rights disputes so often run alongside trademark and copyright claims, which is squarely an intellectual property law matter.
Practical steps if your identity is being misused
- Preserve evidence. Full-page screenshots, URLs, account handles, dates, view and follower counts, and the context (advertisement, merchandise, deepfake). Download the file itself, not just an image of it.
- Send a legal notice and a take-down request to the infringer and, separately, to the hosting platform through its grievance channel. Keep the ticket numbers and every reply.
- Consider a John Doe injunction if the uploaders are anonymous or numerous, and put the URL schedule in the application rather than leaving it to be filed later.
- Check trademark registration of your name and signature. If you have none, file now; rights relate back to the application date.
- Assemble the commercial proof. Endorsement contracts, rate cards, past licence fees and brand-deal invoices are what convert "they used my face" into a number.
- Report criminal impersonation under Sections 66C, 66D and 66E of the IT Act read with Sections 318, 319 and 336 BNS where there is fraud, morphing or sexual content.
- Act fast. Interim relief depends on showing urgency, and unexplained delay is the most common reason these applications fail.
Where the misuse involves fraud, morphing or sexual content, these are the provisions a criminal complaint is built on.
Section 66C IT Act
Identity theft under the Information Technology Act, 2000. What has to be shown is dishonest or fraudulent use of your identifying particulars.
Section 66D IT Act
Cheating by personation using a computer resource, one of the impersonation provisions to invoke where fraud, morphing or sexual content is involved.
Section 66E IT Act
Violation of privacy. What must be shown is capture or publication without consent, which is the usual complaint in morphed and intimate image cases.
Section 319 BNS
Cheating by personation, formerly Sections 416 and 419 of the Indian Penal Code. Quote both numberings in a complaint so nothing turns on the change.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a specific personality rights law in India?
No single statute. Protection is built from the constitutional right to privacy, trademark and passing-off law, performer's rights under Sections 38, 38A and 38B of the Copyright Act, 1957, and IT Act provisions, applied by courts case by case.
Can I stop someone using my photo in an advertisement without consent?
Generally yes, if you are identifiable and the use implies endorsement or exploits your image commercially. Courts have granted injunctions in such cases, and the false-endorsement line of authority runs from Titan Industries v. Ramkumar Jewellers (2012).
Are personality rights only for celebrities?
Everyone has privacy and dignity rights and can act against impersonation and morphing. The commercial publicity right is most strongly enforced for people whose identity has recognisable commercial value, because that is what the misuse is trading on.
Do personality rights protect against AI deepfakes?
Yes. Courts have extended protection to AI-generated images and voice clones, with take-down orders and directions to disclose uploader details, using personality rights alongside IT Act impersonation provisions. Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures (Bombay HC, 2024) covered voice and vocal style; Gautam Gambhir v. Ashok Kumar/John Doe (Delhi HC, 25 March 2026) covered AI-generated impersonation videos.
Does my voice count as part of my identity?
On current authority, yes for a performer whose voice is recognisable. Arijit Singh treated voice, vocal style and technique and manner of singing as protectable facets of personality, which is what makes AI voice cloning actionable rather than merely distasteful.
Do personality rights pass to my legal heirs after death?
Unsettled. In Krishna Kishore Singh (Delhi HC, 10 June 2021) the court examined the question, noted the absence of statutory recognition, refused the pre-emptive injunction, but directed the defendants to render accounts in case inheritability was established at trial. Treat the position as open and take advice on the facts.
What is a John Doe order?
An injunction against unknown or unnamed infringers, also called an Ashok Kumar order, useful for removing anonymous online misuse without naming each defendant. It is now the standard form in AI-impersonation suits.
Can a sponsor or an event organiser claim publicity rights in me?
No. ICC v. Arvee Enterprises held that the right inheres only in the individual and not in the event or the corporation that organised it. What a sponsor gets is whatever your contract licenses, and nothing more.
Should I register my name as a trademark?
For public figures, registering a name or signature as a trademark gives clearer, faster statutory protection than relying only on common-law passing off, and it costs a fraction of the litigation it prevents.
How quickly must I move?
As soon as you have preserved the evidence. Delay undermines urgency, weakens the balance of convenience, and in fast-moving deepfake cases lets the harm compound past the point an injunction can undo it.
Related reading
- Trademark infringement in India: how brands protect their name
- Copyright and performer's rights explained for creators
For tailored guidance on protecting a name, image or brand, see our intellectual property law practice.
Authoritative reference: Trade Marks Act, 1999 on the official India Code portal, indiacode.nic.in.
Written by Sharan Jain, Advocate, S Jain & Attorneys, Bengaluru. General information, not legal advice.
