Balancing Privacy and Intellectual Property: Personality Rights vs. Paparazzi Copyright in India and the United States

In today’s world, there is a growing conflict between two legal rights—one belongs to paparazzi photographers who hold the copyright of the pictures they take, and the other belongs to celebrities who want to control how their image is used. This paper looks at the legal and ethical issues that come up when celebrities are dragged in lawsuits for posting paparazzi photos of themselves on their social media handles. These photos are often taken without the celebrity’s permission, but still, the law gives copyright protection to the photographer. To understand this issue better, the paper compares how the law works in India and the United States. It focuses on important ideas like fair use, moral rights, and the right to publicity. This paper looks at real cases involving celebrities like Dua Lipa, Gigi Hadid, and Emily Ratajkowski to understand how courts have been handling this issue and how the laws are still unclear. It proposes a balanced solution that includes limited fair use rights for celebrities and also respects the creative rights of photographers.