Delhi High Court Protects Personality Rights Of Telugu Actor Nagarjuna; Restrains Unauthorised Use Of His Name, Image

Justice Tejas Karia restrained various websites and John Doe (unknown entities) restrained from violating the actor's personality or moral rights by directly or indirectly using or exploiting or misappropriating his name, image likeness; or other attributes of his persona.

The defendants have been restrained from creating, sharing or disseminating any product or content for any commercial or personal gain by exploiting Nagarjuna's personality traits without his consent, through technology including, but not limited to Artificial Intelligence, Generative Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deepfakes or Face Morphing.

The Court also directed the defendant websites to take down, remove, disable and block the URLs mentioned in the actor's plea seeking interim injunction, within 72 hours.

It further directed the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunication to issue necessary directions to block and disable the impugned URLs mentioned in the plea.

Justice Karia said that 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. 

The Court said that 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 or endorsement by the actor.

“Considering the pleadings, documents and submissions made by the learned Counsel for the Plaintiff, it is prima facie clear that the attributes of the Plaintiff's persona, including his name and images, are being misused by Defendant Nos. 1 to 13 and 20, without any authorization from the Plaintiff,” the Court said.

“The Plaintiff is a celebrated personality in the entertainment industry and the depiction of the Plaintiff in settings that are misleading, derogatory and inappropriate will inevitably have the effect of diluting the goodwill and reputation associated with the Plaintiff,” it added.

Previously, Bollywood actors like Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan and Anil Kapoor had filed similar suits seeking protection of their personality rights.

Similarly, Filmmaker and producer Karan Johar had also filed a similar suit. Justice Karia granted relief to Johar while ordering take down of “disparaging material” against Johar, including videos, memes and social media posts.

Notably, the high court had recently passed an order protecting personality rights of actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan observing that unauthorized exploitation of personal attributes of an individual violates right to privacy and undermines the right to live with dignity.

A co-ordinate bench had restrained various entities from misusing the personal attributes of the actress like her name and images by employing technological tools, including Artificial Intelligence.

Meanwhile in her actor-husband Abhishek Bachchan's similar lawsuit, the court also protected his personality rightsby restraining various entities from misusing his image, name, voice or other elements of his persona for monetary gains without his consent or authorization.

The co-ordinate bench observed that use of technology to depict Bachchan in settings that are misleading, derogatory or inappropriate, intrudes upon the his right to privacy.

Nagarjuna was represented by advocates Pravin Anand, Vaishali Mittal, Vibhav Mithal and Shivang Sharma.

Counsel for Plaintiff: Mr. Pravin Anand, Advocate with Mr. Vaibhav Gaggar, Senior Advocate; Ms. Vaishali R Mittal, Mr. Vibhav Mithal, Mr. Shivang Sharma, Mr. Somdev Tiwari, Mr. Abhishek Nair and Mr. Vansh Shrivastav, Advocates

Title: Akkineni Nagarjuna v. X & Ors

Citation: 2025 LiveLaw (Del) 1235

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