The Delhi High Court has restrained anyone from using Telugu actor Nagarjuna’s name, image, or likeness without permission, including AI-generated content. The court also ordered blocking of infringing URLs to safeguard his reputation and goodwill.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has recently issued a significant order to protect the personality rights of Telugu film actor Akkineni Nagarjuna. The court’s decision comes after Nagarjuna raised concerns about the unauthorized use of his name, image, likeness, and persona on social media platforms, online content, and merchandise.
On September 25, Justice Tejas Karia observed that Nagarjuna’s name, image, likeness, and persona have gained a unique distinctiveness.
The court highlighted that any third party using these elements without permission is likely to cause confusion among the public regarding affiliation, endorsement, or sponsorship.
The Court further noted,
“The exploitation of one’s personality rights puts at risk not only their economic interests but also their right to live with dignity, potentially causing immeasurable harm to their reputation and goodwill as the adoption of the attributes such as name, image, likeness unauthorizedly will inevitably cause confusion in the minds of the members of the public regarding association with / endorsement by the Plaintiff,”
In light of these observations, the Delhi High Court restrained the defendants, including unknown persons or John Does, from using Nagarjuna’s name, image, likeness, or any other attributes that are exclusively identifiable with him.
The court also directed the blocking of URLs that infringe upon Nagarjuna’s personality rights to prevent further misuse.
The case was filed by Nagarjuna to stop unauthorized content that misuses his image, particularly content uploaded on social media platforms like YouTube.
His legal team also raised concerns about AI-generated content that uses morphed images of the actor. They stressed that allowing such content could worsen the problem if it is used for training artificial intelligence (AI) models in the future.
Nagarjuna’s legal representation included Advocate Pravin Anand, Senior Advocate Vaibhav Gaggar, and advocates Vaishali R Mittal, Vibhav Mithal, Shivang Sharma, Somdev Tiwari, Abhishek Nair, and Vansh Shrivastav.
They highlighted that the actor has a considerable reputation, which is at risk due to unauthorized use of his image and likeness.
This ruling reinforces the importance of personality rights and sets a strong precedent in India for protecting the reputation, goodwill, and economic interests of public figures against unauthorized use, especially in the digital age where content can spread rapidly online.
Case Title:
Akkineni Nagarjuna v Www.BFXXX.Org & Ors
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