Delhi High Court protected personality rights of Arjun Kapoor, restraining misuse of identity. Justice Tushar Rao Gedela ordered removal of infringing content including deepfakes, merchandise misuse, and impersonation materials.
The Delhi High Court has recognised and protected the personality rights of actor Arjun Kapoor, and has restrained unauthorised parties from using his name, voice, image and other identifiable attributes particularly for purposes such as impersonation, selling merchandise, creating deepfake material, and publishing obscene content.
In an interim order issued, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela ordered the removal of the allegedly infringing material. The judge noted that Kapoor has carved out a distinct presence in the film industry and that his name, voice, image, likeness, photograph, unique persona and signature warrant protection from exploitation.
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The court said that the “overwhelming number of screenshots” produced in Kapoor’s lawsuit showed, at least prima facie, a breach of his personality/publicity rights. It pointed in particular to content reportedly generated through AI tools, allegedly for unlawful financial gain.
The court further held that denying relief at this stage would cause Kapoor irreparable harm, and that the damage to his personality might not be adequately repairable through monetary compensation.
The court stated,
“Clearly, those defendants who have employed AI tools to create videos containing sexually explicit and abhorrent content are demonstrably violating the personality/publicity rights of the plaintiff. In fact, such videos are vulgar and clearly would dent the image and the personality rights of the plaintiff, not only beyond measure, but presumably, irreparably too. Such content cannot be permitted to continue to be available on any platforms in any manner whatsoever and are needed to be taken down forthwith,”
The tabulated summary of the defendants’ alleged activities indicates that they have been unlawfully exploiting and misappropriating the plaintiff’s personality and publicity rights, which are exclusively vested in the plaintiff.
It opined,
“It is also clear that such defendants are wilfully indulging in such infringing activities solely for the purposes of unlawful financial gains, and thereby unjustly enriching themselves. Clearly, there is no permission or license granted by the plaintiff to any of the defendants for exploitation of his personality/publicity rights,”
The court directed Meta and Google to provide the “Basic Subscriber Information” relating to certain Facebook/Instagram accounts and YouTube channels, respectively, that were alleged to be involved.
Earlier, multiple public figures such as actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Salman Khan, Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, and podcaster Raj Shamani had approached the high court seeking similar protection for their personality and publicity rights. The court granted them interim relief. More recently, it also issued interim protection for cricketer Gautam Gambhir and actors Sonakshi Sinha, Vivek Oberoi and Allu Arjun.
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