PERSONALITY RIGHTS
DEFINITION
Personality rights are the legal protections in the UK and EU covering an individual's name, image, and other personal attributes, generally rooted in privacy, dignity, and data protection law rather than a standalone commercial right.
WHAT IT MEANS IN PRACTICE
Germany and France give personality rights particularly strong footing, treating control over one's own image as a facet of human dignity that survives even limited commercial pressure. This is a different philosophical basis than the US right of publicity, which treats identity more like a tradeable property interest.
The UK has no single personality rights statute and instead patches protection together from passing off, data protection law, and privacy claims, which makes outcomes less predictable than in France or Germany.
EU data protection law, notably the GDPR's rules on processing images as personal data, adds a further layer that has no real US equivalent, meaning consent requirements for using someone's photo can be stricter in Europe purely on privacy grounds, independent of any publicity right.
AN EXAMPLE
A German fitness brand publishes a customer's before-and-after photo on Instagram without asking again after the original consent expired. Under German personality rights and GDPR, the customer can demand removal even though the brand owns the underlying photo file.
WATCH OUT
European personality rights can require ongoing consent rather than a one-time signature, so an old release does not always cover new uses.
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