Introduction
The law of trademarks protects commercial symbols and signs appended to goods and/or services, including, but not limited to — a word, logo, number or device. Its twin purpose is to act as a source identifier for brands and help consumers distinguish the goods and/or services of one proprietor from the other, thereby intercepting consumer confusion. The common law remedy for passing-off under trademarks complements this by deterring a third-party trader from riding on the goodwill of a brand which causes misrepresentation and confuses a consumer as to the source of goods and/or services.
Recently, courts are granting the remedy of passing-off under trademarks to celebrities for protection of their public personalities, names, voices, images and even catchphrases. This development poses a central query: should trademarks, as an intellectual property, safeguard celebrity identities, or should law of torts and regulations pertaining to privacy be the primary foundation for claiming such protection? The answer to this lies with the fundamental question – whether the commercial use of the attributes of celebrity’s personality should be prohibited under trademarks or whether its unlicensed commercial exploitation be curbed within the ambit of the right to privacy and publicity? While a prohibition can only be mitigated, curbing its use within the frameworks of privacy and publicity laws may put an end to every unwarranted use – whether commercial or otherwise.
What’s trending: the legal interpretation of Personality Rights
Personality rights are traditionally understood in two dimensions. First, privacy rights, guarding against invasion of dignity and control over private life. Second, publicity rights, acknowledging the commercial potential of one’s persona and permitting control over its exploitation. The absence of a specific legislation that recognizes personality rights in India has led courts to interpret it as passing-off under trademarks.
While in Karan Johar v. Indian Pride Advisory, Johar’s persona misuse in a film title was curbed on identity infringement grounds, in Rajat Sharma v. Ravindra Choudhary, the Delhi High Court stepped in to prevent satirical representation of the news anchor tending to mislead readers.
The Delhi High Court in the case of Karan Johar, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bhachchan has gone to the extent of granting blanket injunctions as John Doe orders to restrain the defendants from using any AI-enabled technologies to obtain proprietary benefits from the unauthorised use of his name, likeness, image, voice and other personality attributes or gain any commercial benefits. Similarly, In the cases of Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers and Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi, the court treated the unauthorised use of photographs or images of the celebrities as an unauthorized endorsement.
In parallel, the most dramatic example in the series of personality right judgements is that of Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India where the Delhi High Court granted a blanket John Doe injunction restraining unauthorized use of Kapoor’s name, likeness, voice, and catchphrases like “jhakaas.” Such protection transcended preventing consumer confusion, effectively giving Kapoor the right to monopolize his persona. Likewise, in Jackie Shroff v. Peppy Store, the court restrained restaurants and merchandise vendors from profiting off Shroff’s image and voice without permission. Hence, it is imperative that passing-off action as a remedy for a personality rights claim is tenable only when there is demonstrable harm to the celebrity’s goodwill or reputation arising from misrepresentation through an unauthorised endorsement. Recently in Akkineni Nagarjuna v. www.BFXXX.org & Ors. and Asha Bhosle v Mayk Inc also the courts directed the defendants from violating the moral rights of the celebrity and passing off their goods and/or services as emanating from or being endorsed by the plaintiff as the same would amount to misappropriating or exploiting the name, image and the likeness of the actor.
These rulings clarified that any unauthorised use of a celebrity’s attribute constitutes a harm not only to the commercial value of such celebrity’s personality, but also to their dignity. It is a mistaken assumption to rely on the trademark remedy of passing off or the moral rights under copyright law to safeguard an individual’s personality and dignity.
Extending trademarks to personality rights- using false trade descriptions as a rule of evidence
Doctrinally, a celebrity’s persona does not fall within the statutory framework of trademarks. Section 2(z) defines goods, Section 2(j) defines services, and Section 2(zb) defines trademarks as signs distinguishing goods or services. A likeness, voice, or catchphrase cannot be slotted into these categories and thus cannot be trademark infringement. Passing off, in its true sense, is a common law remedy to restrain actual or likely damage caused by misrepresentation in trade. Extending it to protect celebrity persona distorts this limited purpose and risks creating monopolies over identity itself.
These rulings betray a judicial impulse to shoehorn personality rights disputes into trademark law instead of crafting a principled doctrine. This obfuscates the lines between privacy, property, and IP law and risks tenuous precedents, granting celebrities broad control without weighing consumer confusion or intent to deceive. While such decisions show judicial receptivity to safeguarding celebrity identity, they also betray inconsistency—now treating personality rights as privacy, sometimes as property, and ever more as quasi-trademarks. Lacking a consistent rationale, courts risk awarding overly broad protections that intrude on free speech and artistic expression.
The root fallacy is treating celebrity identity as a trademark. Section 2(zb) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, provides definitions of trademarks in the context of goods and services only and not as aspects of personality such as voice or gestures. Extending its scope to encompass human identity results in at least three significant drawbacks. Firstly, overprotection, as happened in Anil Kapoor, when even satire and parody were frozen by blanket injunctions. Secondly, conceptual ambiguity, as courts switch between privacy, property, and IP paradigms without distinction. Thirdly, tenuous precedents, because such reasoning is based on weak statutory ground.
In order to justify protection of celebrity persona under trademark law, it must be proved whether such unauthorized use creates confusion or misleads the public into assuming endorsement may be applied. This is what is provided under Section 2(1)(i)(IV) and (V), defines false trade descriptions as application of any mark and/or any arrangement to goods and /or services in such a manner as to be likely to lead persons to believe that the goods and/or services are the manufacture or merchandise of some person other than the person whose merchandise or manufacture they really are or the use of any false name or initials of a person to goods and/or services. Interestingly, a striking feature of all the judgments pertaining to enforcing personality rights of a celebrity failed to engage with this provision. This lurks risking the conversion of human personalities and their identities as monopolies under trademarks. However, reliance on Section 2(1)(i)(IV) and (V), should be cautious and limited only to those cases where genuine consumer confusion exists, and not as a blanket tool prohibiting expressive or cultural uses of celebrity likeness.
Conclusion: Charting the Way Forward
In countries like the USA and UK, courts have usually protected personality rights through the common law of passing off – based on unjust enrichment and unauthorised misappropriation – thereby curbing false impression of celebrity endorsements. Denmark has extended copyright ownership to individuals over their physical likeness, including facial features, voice, and body.
Indeed, personality rights cases must straddle both reputational and economic dimensions, but surely not as passing off a trademark, unless there is explicit registration of their name, image, voice, likeness under trademarks or copyright law. In fact, dynamic and superlative injunctions must identify confusion and intention as prima facie evidences of unauthorised endorsement or false association, resulting in damage to the celebrity’s reputation. A reference under the trademark law under false trade descriptions [section 2(1)(i)(IV) and (V)] and trade descriptions under [section 2(za)], may further strengthen the claims of false endorsements of goods and/or services, provided personality attributes are registered. With the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2025, enforcing personality rights as a sui generis framework may integrate legal principles from tort of misappropriation, privacy, copyright ownership, and false endorsement under trademarks. In the age of artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and digital replicas of individuals, one’s likeness and persona constitute not merely personal information, but also embody dignity, identity, and substantial economic value. Consequently, the evolution of India’s data protection framework is likely to influence and shape the trajectory of its personality rights jurisprudence in the coming years.
About Authors:
- Dr. Gunjan Chawla Arora is an academician with over a decade of experience in research and teaching in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) law. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Law and heads the Centre for Intellectual Property Rights at the Institute of Law, Nirma University, Gujarat, India. She has several publications in the area of Intellectual Property Law, Fashion Law and emerging issues such as AI, the Metaverse, and digital piracy. Her academic interests also extend to the field of artificial intelligence, entertainment media, information technology, and telecommunications law.
- Ashwika M M is a third-year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), student at the Institute of Law, Nirma University, Gujarat, India. She has a keen interest in Intellectual Property Law and actively engages in research and practical learning in this field. She is an accomplished mooter, having won the Symbiosis Moot Court Competition 2025 and is preparing to participate as an oralist in the Vis International Arbitration Moot 2026. She is academically inclined and has explored different areas of law through her course of study and internships.
