The Delhi High Court has granted Karan Johar an interim injunction protecting his personality rights, restraining misuse of his name, image, voice, and AI-generated content. The Court said offensive deepfakes, memes and morphed posts damage his reputation and brand value.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has given relief to filmmaker and television personality Karan Johar by passing an ex parte ad interim injunction in his favour, protecting his personality rights.
Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora ruled that no one can misuse Johar’s identity in any manner. The Court made it clear that infringers cannot use his name, his well-known acronym ‘KJo’, his image, voice, likeness, or any other aspect of his personality.
The Court also stopped people from creating or circulating deepfakes, GIFs, or any other Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated content using Johar’s persona for money-making or commercial gain.
The Court order stated:
“The Primary Infringing Defendants or anyone acting for or on their behalf are restrained from utilizing the Plaintiff-Karan Johar’s name, his acronym ‘KJo’, likeness, image, voice, personality or any other aspects of his persona to create any merchandise, or in any other manner misuse the said attributes using technological tools such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, deep fakes, face morphing, GIFs either for monetary gains or otherwise to create any videos, photographs, etc., for commercial purposes, so as to result in violation of the Plaintiff’s rights.”
Justice Arora observed that the videos, memes and posts available on social media platforms contained abusive and vulgar words, along with offensive innuendoes.
The Court noted:
“The said content tarnishes the reputation and goodwill of the Plaintiff affecting his brand value. The Plaintiff is prima facie entitled to seek injunction to protect his personality rights again such negative use.”
The Court highlighted that it had earlier passed similar protection orders for other celebrities, including actors Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
During the hearing, Senior Advocate Rajshekhar Rao, who appeared for Johar, argued that Johar’s name was being misused to raise money online. Rao said:
“I am celebrity and I don’t want to look in a certain manner…I am subjected to public ridicule. The objective is this that it starts a diatribe against me and is monetised.”
He added that there should be limits on public ridicule when the purpose is to earn money from it. Rao further stated:
“Do I have a right to prevent someone from using my attributes per se? Don’t stoop to level of public ridicule. At some point they should be called to court, a line should be drawn. I will draw the line at some level. I will look away for hundreds of posts. But some things are non-negotiable.”
On the other side, Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, told the Court that many of the comments flagged by Johar’s legal team were not defamatory in nature. Advocate Varun Pathak, representing Meta, argued that giving a blanket ban would lead to many unnecessary lawsuits.
Pathak submitted that:
“Passing a blanket injunction will open floodgates for litigation.”
Justice Arora also clarified that the Court would not ban posts that only fall under sarcasm or satire. While going through several social media posts shown by Johar’s side, Justice Arora expressed surprise at the volume of content being circulated.
In the interim order, the High Court not only restrained infringers but also directed online intermediaries to provide BSI details and IP log details of those involved in making and spreading such content.
The matter has now been listed for further hearing on February 19, 2026.
Senior Advocate Rajshekhar Rao appeared for Karan Johar along with advocates Nizamuddin Pasha, Parag Khandhar, Chandrima Mitra, Krishan Kumar and Sidharth Kaushik.
Case Title:
Karan Johar v. Ashok Kumar/John Doe & Ors.
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