Celebrity Rights in the Contemporary World: IPR Protection and Way Forward

Several people all around the world are termed as celebrities for their accolades, lifestyle or different factors affecting public perception. These celebrities are said to possess several rights relating to their attributes, commercial viability and privacy. With progression in technology and mass media such celebrities are often subjected to violation of their rights and misappropriation of their attributes. The development of Celebrity rights all around the world is at a nascent stage with no codified laws. Celebrity rights are a bundle of rights having several allied rights such as personality rights, privacy rights, publicity rights etc. and the statutory framework in India has not been able to provide for sufficient protection of these rights. Nonetheless, the IPR regime specifically the trade mark and copyright framework is of relevance to some extent. These laws however, have limitations in providing adequate protection to celebrity rights. The paper discusses an intellectual property centered attempt towards the protection of celebrity rights, the judicial precedents, the recent trends and suggests the way forward.