What does Rajinikanth's latest public notice mean? How does it affect us?

Superstar Rajinikanth had issued a public notice against use of his name, voice and/or image for any commercial use. We might wonder why celebrities do not want us to use their name, voice, image or any likeliness of their personality which is already out in the public space where public have access.

According to legal researchers and profound scholars, there exist a commercial value in the name, voice, image or any other likeliness of a celebrity. Celebrities generally sell themselves, as in, they are being paid for using their name, voice or other likeliness in movies or advertisements. Celebrities allow the brand to exhibit an association of the brand with the celebrity in order to let the public associate the celebrity's well-known value and ideologies with the brand.

This ensures that an exclusive right is being given to the celebrity to protect their public image from commercial exploitation and this right is known as right of publicity. As we have already discussed about why Superstar Pizza infringes the right of publicity of our superstar Rajinikanth, we need to understand that using of any celebrity's name, image, voice, signature or any other likeliness without the permission of that celebrity for any commercial purpose would mean that we have infringed the right of publicity of the celebrity. If we do so, we can be legally liable.

Similarly, this restriction can definitely not be absolute. Fair usage of images or sounds are protected by fair deal (section 52) of Indian Copyright Act.

Using Superstar Rajinikanth's image and adding additional original modifications to it to render a completely different expression and then used for a commercial purpose would not amount an infringement.

Here we are using Superstar Rajinikanth's image. But the purpose of it is Educational.

The secondary work that makes use of the original image will be under examination to check it's an infringement or not by considering its nature, amount of work that has been taken from the original work, purpose of the secondary work and impact in the market.

Celebrity Laws are under development when India is concerned. Since there is no sui Jeneris (separate law) major public figures use IP rights to protect their name from misappropriation.

Do visit our other article on how Vijay Sethupathi projects his name by registering his name as trademark in different classes.