The Delhi High Court has barred several social media accounts and websites from misusing the personality rights of Bollywood actor Arjun Kapoor, including selling merchandise that features his name or likeness.On April 29, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela issued an ex parte interim injunction to safeguard Kapoor’s personality and publicity rights. The court also instructed Google and Meta to remove infringing URLs and disclose Basic Subscriber Information (BSI) of those running the accounts responsible for circulating such content.
The court noted that the defendants were unlawfully exploiting Kapoor’s identity for financial gain. “Clearly, there is no permission or license granted by the plaintiff to any of the defendants for exploitation of his personality/publicity rights,” the Bench observed, adding that any unauthorized use would amount to a clear violation of his rights.The direction came in a suit filed by Kapoor seeking protection of his personality rights. His counsel, Pravin Anand, argued that his client’s identity was being commercially misused through the sale of items like T-shirts and posters, along with unauthorized event bookings.He also brought to the court’s attention the circulation of obscene and pornographic material online, including AI-generated sexually explicit deepfake videos. After reviewing the evidence, the court held that an ex-parte ad-interim injunction was justified, rejecting the intermediaries’ claim that some of the content qualified as parody or satire.“Though the intermediaries may be right in some of such screenshots, however, the overwhelming numbers of screenshots placed on record, and perused by this Court do appear to be, to this Court, a prima facie, infringement of the personality/publicity rights of the plaintiff,” it said.On the issue of explicit content, Justice Gedela ordered its immediate removal, observing that such material was clearly offensive and damaging.“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,” the Court said.The judge further acknowledged that Kapoor has built a distinct identity through his films, philanthropic work, and strong presence across digital and print platforms.“All these attributes individually or cumulatively are source identifiers of the plaintiff, and his personality/publicity rights. Any exploitation without permission or license of the plaintiff would demonstrably constitute infringement of plaintiff’s personality/publicity rights,” the Court said.While directing the removal of infringing material, the court also clarified that Kapoor is free to initiate action against any additional violators that may surface. The matter is scheduled for hearing on October 10.Earlier, the court has protected the personality rights of many other celebrities like Abhishek and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan, Nagarjuna, Karan Johar, Kumar Sanu, Salman Khan, Vivek Oberoi, Kartik Aaryan among others.
