Here is a scene that plays out more often than the creator economy likes to admit. A content creator does a one-week campaign for a skincare brand in March 2024. Flat fee, three Reels, one static post, paid on time, everybody happy. In August 2026 the same creator is scrolling and finds their own face — same Reel, same audio, same slightly-too-enthusiastic delivery — running as a paid advertisement from the brand's own handle, targeted at users in the UAE, with a shopping link attached.
The creator's first instinct is that something illegal has happened. The creator's second instinct, upon finally reading the contract, is considerably worse: nothing illegal has happened at all. Clause 7 said “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence, in all media whether now known or hereafter devised,” and they signed it on a phone screen at 11 p.m. between two shoots.
Brand deals in India are, for the most part, signed unread. That is not a moral failing of creators — it is a structural feature of a market where the brand sends a PDF, the agency says “this is our standard template, we can't change it,” and the alternative to signing is not getting paid. But “standard template” is doing an enormous amount of work in that sentence, and a surprising number of these clauses are negotiable, defective, or flatly unenforceable.
Five of them are worth knowing about.
What are you actually selling?
Start with what the creator owns, because most creators don't realise they own anything at all.
A Reel is a cinematograph film under the Copyright Act, 1957; a photograph is an artistic work. Absent a contract saying otherwise, the person who conceived, shot and edited the thing is its author and first owner. What the brand is buying, therefore, is not the video. It is permission — a licence — to use the video.
That distinction matters, because the Act is unusually prescriptive about what such a grant must say. Section 19(3) requires the instrument to specify the rights granted, the duration, the territorial extent, and the royalty or other consideration payable. Section 19(5) provides that if the period is not stated, it is deemed to be five years. Section 19(6) provides that if the territory is not specified, it is presumed to extend within India only. And Section 30A applies all of this, with necessary adaptations, to licences.
These are not decorative provisions. In Pine Labs, the Delhi High Court held on appeal that where the agreement was silent on duration and territory, the grant ran for five years and for India alone, after which the copyright reverted to the author.
So the creator whose contract is silent — and a great many are, particularly the ones concluded by email and a purchase order — is in a far stronger position than they imagine. Five years, India only, and the brand's Dubai campaign is an infringement.
The creator whose contract says “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide” is in a much weaker one, because that clause is, on its face, perfectly valid. Sections 19(5) and (6) are gap-fillers, not prohibitions. Which is rather the point: the clause is only unenforceable if nobody bothered to write it.
Does a copyright licence give the brand your face?
No. Or at least, not necessarily — and this is where the more interesting fight lives.
Copyright in the video and the right to commercially exploit the person appearing in the video are two different things. India has no publicity rights statute; the right has been assembled by the courts out of passing off and privacy. In ICC Development (International) Ltd v Arvee Enterprises, the Delhi High Court held that the right of publicity had evolved from the right of privacy and could inhere only in an individual, in indicia such as name, personality trait, signature or voice. Titan Industries framed it as control over where, when and how one's commercial identity is used. More recently, Anil Kapoor extended the same reasoning to AI-generated imitations, and the Bombay High Court did likewise for voice cloning in Arijit Singh.
The practical consequence is this: a licence of copyright in the content is not automatically a licence of the creator's persona. If the brand takes a two-year-old Reel, crops out everything except the creator's face, and puts it on packaging and hoardings, the creator may have surrendered the copyright argument and still hold the personality-rights one — unless clause 7 also said “name, image, likeness, voice and persona,” which the better-drafted templates now do.
The less well-drafted ones don't. It is worth finding out which one you signed.
One limit deserves an honest flag. This line of cases has been built almost entirely on celebrity goodwill. A creator with forty thousand followers asserting the same right is making a harder argument — not an impossible one, since privacy under Article 21 is not rationed by follower count, but harder.
Can the exclusivity clause outlive the contract?
Nearly every brand deal contains a category exclusivity: for the term, and often for some months afterwards, the creator will not promote a competing product. Sometimes “competing” is defined generously enough to cover half the FMCG shelf.
The law here is settled, and it is good news for creators. Section 27 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 voids agreements in restraint of trade. The Supreme Court has consistently held that a negative covenant operating during the subsistence of a contract is not a restraint, but one restricting future liberty after the contract ends is.
And the leading authority is, delightfully, an endorsement case. In Percept D'Mark (India) Pvt Ltd v Zaheer Khan, the Supreme Court considered clause 31(b) of a promotion agreement — a right of first refusal exercisable after the term had expired — and held that it restricted the cricketer's future liberty to deal with persons of his choosing for endorsements, promotions and advertising, was squarely hit by Section 27, and was void.
A six-month post-term category lock-in, or a right of first refusal over the creator's next deal, is therefore on distinctly thin ice. Creators sign these because they assume they bind. Brands insert them for the same reason. Both are frequently mistaken.
Who pays when the CCPA calls?
This is the clause that costs real money, and it is the one nobody reads.
The standard indemnity requires the creator to indemnify the brand against all claims, losses, penalties and legal costs arising from the content. Reasonable enough, if the creator ad-libbed something reckless. Except that the creator usually didn't — the brand supplied the script, the claims and the mandatory talking points.
Meanwhile, Section 21 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 exposes the creator personally. The Central Consumer Protection Authority may impose a penalty of up to ₹10 lakh on an endorser for a false or misleading advertisement, extending to ₹50 lakh for subsequent contraventions. It may separately prohibit the endorser from making any endorsement at all for up to one year, extending to three years on repetition. There is a defence — no penalty where the endorser exercised due diligence to verify the veracity of the claims — but that defence is personal to the creator and does precisely nothing about the contract.
So the arithmetic on a campaign that goes wrong runs like this. Firstly, the creator absorbs the regulatory penalty. Secondly, the creator absorbs an endorsement ban that removes their livelihood for a year. Thirdly, under the indemnity, the creator absorbs the brand's legal costs as well. All for a fee of ₹80,000.
The redline is straightforward, and brands rarely resist it: make the indemnity mutual, and carve out claims arising from brand-supplied scripts, claims or product substantiation. If the brand told you the serum reverses photoageing in fourteen days, the brand can defend that sentence.
And the morality clause?
Increasingly common, and drafted with a breadth that would embarrass a colonial-era sedition provision. Typically: the brand may terminate, withhold unpaid fees and demand a refund of fees already paid if the creator engages in conduct that “brings or is likely to bring the brand into disrepute,” as determined by the brand.
Three problems, in ascending order of usefulness. Firstly, the trigger is almost always undefined, and a term so vague that its meaning cannot be made certain invites an argument under Section 29 of the Contract Act. Secondly, the determination is vested unilaterally in the party that profits from making it, which is not a promising foundation for a clawback claim. Thirdly, where bargaining power is grossly unequal and the term is unconscionable, there is at least an argument under Section 23 read with the line of authority beginning with Central Inland Water Transport Corporation v Brojo Nath Ganguly — though it should be said plainly that this line has developed largely in employment and State-contract settings, and stretching it to a commercial services agreement between two private parties is an uphill walk rather than a downhill stroll.
The practical fix is easier than the doctrinal one: define the trigger. Conviction for an offence involving moral turpitude, or an adverse finding by a statutory authority. Not “conduct the brand considers unbecoming,” which on a bad week means anything at all.
So what do you actually ask for?
Five redlines, in rough order of how much money they save.
- Change “perpetual” to a stated term — twelve or eighteen months, with paid renewal thereafter.
- Change “worldwide” to the markets actually being targeted.
- Separate the organic-post licence from the paid-media licence and price the second one, because a whitelisted advertisement is a media buy using your face and ought to be paid for as such.
- Make the indemnity mutual and carve out brand-supplied claims.
- Define the morality trigger objectively.
And one that costs nothing at all. Where a campaign is running as a partnership advertisement through the platform's own branded-content tools, that permission is a separate switch sitting inside your account, not inside the contract. Revoking it does not cure the contract — but it does turn the advertisements off while you argue about the contract, which is a rather better negotiating position than the reverse.
None of this requires a fight. Most brands will accept four of the five without a murmur, for the straightforward reason that nobody has ever asked. The template is standard because it goes unread, not because it is fair.
Arkadeep Pal is a litigation practitioner at Pal & Co. This piece is general commentary and not legal advice on any specific contract.