Course Description

Acknowledgement of Course Ideators and past versions of the course instructed:

This course is ideated and structured by the course instructor herself, and is largely modelled on the  Doctoral work of the instructor (NLU Jodhpur, 2025, available here – https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/678604) as well as, is loosely adapted from, heavily  modified and Indian-ised version of the Spring 2012 course curriculum for Entertainment Law: Popular  Iconography and the Celebrity taught by Prof. David Tan, NUS, Faculty of Law. E-mail of permission  to adapt is available with the instructor.

Earlier versions of this course have been administered at NALSAR (Jul-Dec, 2019) and since Spring  2021 till Fall 2025 at JGLS, OPJGU Sonipat. This course, in a modified version and with a different  name, was also a compulsory specialization course for the Residential LLM (IPR and Tech.) at JGLS till  Spring 2025 (Celebrity Personality Rights: Overlapping IPRs).

A capsule version of this course was also administered for HNLU’s Lex Osmose one credit course series,  in February-March 2024.

Celebrity today has become all pervasive. We are all fans. Celebrities rule our world – telling us what  to eat, what to wear, what to read, where to travel and if famous enough to push social change – also tell  us whom to vote for.

Today thus celebrity personality is understood widely today as a semiotic sign and thus brands endorsed  by celebrities, and some celebrities in themselves are recognized to represent the values of a majoritarian  public. A counter to encoded ideals may be then available by using the same signs in a “recoded” manner,  and such use can therefore be categorized as “political speech,” protected by the Constitutional guarantee  of freedom of speech and expression. What is the right the celebrity enjoys due to their personality? Are  these rights enjoined to them because of his celebrity status absolute? It seems wrong to allow someone  else to take pecuniary benefit of a celebrity’s unique personality traits. However, does that entitle them  to legally preempt others from using similar voices/looks/mannerisms for any purpose whatsoever?  While the law on copyright or trademarks may not allow a celebrity to preempt use of his voice or other  personality traits, law recognises “personality rights” or “celebrity rights”. These rights have developed  as an offshoot to ‘core’ intellectual property rights, as the celebrity personae, are important and  expressive economic resources – they enhance the commercial values of commodities they are associated  with, thus lending what has been described as the economic associative value of a celebrity persona – i.e. “the perceived ability to confer value on that which might be associated with the celebrity”.1

This economic associative value is protected in law, under the right of publicity. The right of publicity,  most simply put, protects any individual’s marketable image or persona. This formulation, however, has  been most succinctly put forth by McCarthy in his seminal work as – “The right of publicity is not merely  a legal right of the “celebrity”, but is a right inherent to everyone to control the commercial use of  identity and persona and recover in court damages and the commercial value of an unpermitted taking.”2

This course aims at asking and consequently answering, the above questions and more, both with the  celebrity realm and otherwise, through a comparative law lens. Its also aims to equip the students with a  better understanding of how “personality” and “personality indicia” are “propertised” and therefore  protected in law / open to protection in law.