PROTECTION OF CELEBRITY RIGHTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF RELEVANT IPR LAWS IN US, UK AND INDIA

This paper is a modest endeavour to explain a comparative analysis of laws and judicial trends for protection of celebrity rights from U.S., U.K. and India. This paper is based on the evaluation of multi jurisdictional regime of protection granted to celebrity rights, with the analysis of precautions undertaken for balancing the public and private interest while protecting celebrity’s persona and identity. Further, the need for international recognition and universal application of celebrity rights protection forms to be an important aspect of the paper. The concluding remarks derived are firstly, in comparative analysis it can be found that India is at nascent stage of development for protecting publicity rights with no specific protection granted, U.K. does not recognize the concept of publicity rights on one hand and on the other U.S. has given due recognition to publicity rights protection and provided statutory mandate of protection in its twenty two states; Secondly, Publicity right requires a specific statutory protection as other laws fail to protect the right in complete sense. Lastly, there is need of international treaty for publicity rights protection to provide the right international standard and develop uniform mandates of protection in different jurisdictions.