Abstract
In the digital age, the concept of personality rights has gained significant importance as celebrities increasingly face challenges in controlling the commercial and cultural use of their identity online. Personality rights, which include the right to control the use of one’s name, image, likeness, voice, and other identifiable aspects of identity, form an essential component of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and the broader right to privacy and publicity. However, the rapid growth of internet culture—driven by social media, memes, fan edits, parody content, and digital marketing—has complicated the enforcement of these rights.
The internet has created a participatory culture where users frequently remix, reproduce, and circulate celebrity images and identities without consent. While such practices often fall within the domains of free expression, satire, or fan engagement, they may also lead to unauthorized commercial exploitation, reputational harm, and dilution of a celebrity’s brand value. Platforms like social media have further blurred the line between public interest and private control over a celebrity’s digital persona.
Courts in several jurisdictions, including India, have increasingly recognized personality rights as protectable interests under constitutional privacy rights and intellectual property frameworks. Judicial decisions have emphasized that celebrities possess an economic and moral interest in the commercial use of their identity. At the same time, courts must balance these rights with the public’s freedom of speech and creative expression on the internet.
This article examines the evolving conflict between personality rights and internet culture, analyzing how digital platforms challenge traditional IPR protections. It explores key legal developments and judicial approaches to determining when online use of celebrity identity constitutes legitimate expression or unlawful exploitation. Ultimately, the article argues for a balanced legal framework that protects celebrity identity while preserving the creative and participatory nature of internet culture.
INTRODUCTION
According to experts and scholars, intellectual property rights, without enforcement, are worthless. The intangible nature of intellectual property, which allows it to flow relatively freely across borders, presents a need for international enforcement of intellectual property rights (hereinafter IPR).There is, however, no international intellectual property law per se; instead IPRs are subject to the principle of territoriality. These rights vary according to what each state recognizes and enforces. In contemporary times the domain of IPRs has been expanded to afford protection to modern rights such as the ‘right to publicity’ a corollary of the right to privacy, and the bundle of rights that emanate from ‘celebrity rights’ However this incorporation has not been a smooth one, and there has been much friction and conflict on the manner and content of such rights.
The seeds of celebrity rights lay in the novel doctrine of privacy which was created by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in their seminal article — ‘The Right to Privacy’, in which they argued that the basic concept of personal freedom extended to all persons the right ‘to be let alone’. The idea of an individual’s legally protectable right of privacy, so universally accepted today, was a daring assertion in the late nineteenth century. Fifteen years after the Warren and Brandeis article, the Supreme Court of the State of Georgia became the first court to embrace a judicial cause of action for invasion of privacy in Pavesich v. New England Life Insurance Company. The case involved a claim against an insurance company which had published, without permission, the plaintiff’s picture as part of an advertisement. The Pavesich court allowed the plaintiff to recover without proof of special damage, recognizing that one’s personal liberty includes the freedom not only from physical restraint, but also to order one’s life without the intrusion of unwanted publicity. Despite these early beginnings, the concept of ‘celebrity rights’ has struggled, even in the United States of America (hereinafter US), the chief innovator and exporter of celebrity status, to develop a comprehensive, predictable approach to celebrity rights that would allow creators and proprietors of intellectual property to compete more effectively in global markets. A sharply defined right of publicity would provide needed certainty in legitimate commercial transactions involving celebrities, advertisers and entertainment concerns while helping guard against overreaching to avoid unduly restricting public access to popular culture.