The Delhi High Court has passed a john doe interim order protecting the personality rights of actor and entrepreneur Vivek Oberoi.
Justice Tushar Rao Gedela granted an ex-parte ad-interim dynamic injunction in favour of the actor, while restraining multiple defendants and unidentified (John Doe) entities from misappropriating and exploiting his personality and publicity rights, including his name, image, voice, likeness and other distinctive attributes, through artificial intelligence and other digital technologies.
The Court held that Oberoi had made out a strong prima facie case, with the balance of convenience clearly tilted in his favour, and observed that continued unauthorized exploitation of his persona would cause irreparable harm not compensable in monetary terms .
The Court noted that the suit had been instituted alleging large-scale misuse of the actor’s personality across social media platforms, e-commerce websites, video-sharing portals and AI-generated content, including deepfakes, morphed videos, misleading endorsements and impersonation through fake accounts.
Oberoi, represented by Advocate Sana Raees Khan, had contended that such activities falsely suggested his endorsement, affiliation or involvement, thereby diluting and tarnishing his public persona.
Ruling in his favour, Justice Gedela took note of Oberoi’s long-standing career as a leading actor across Hindi and regional cinema, his entrepreneurial ventures, and philanthropic work. The Court observed that the copyright and proprietary interest in his personality traits such as name, voice, image and likeness cannot be doubted at the prima facie stage.
“Prima facie, all the attributes noted above including his voice etc., are exclusively recognized by the general public and those in the entertainment industry, to the plaintiff alone. Thus, the plaintiff, at this stage, has a right to protect his personality apart from all his attributes from unauthorized access by unscrupulous infringers, some of whom are arrayed as defendants in the suit,” the Court said.
It added: “….the plaintiff has a prima facie strong case and having regard to his well-known, popular and well-accepted personality, the balance of convenience is tilted in favour of the plaintiff. In case, ex-parte ad-interiminjunction and other directions, as sought, are not passed, the irreparable loss and injury which may occasion may not be compensated in monetary terms. The dent and damage to the image and personality of the plaintiff, prima facie, appears to be real and present.”
The suit sought to restrain various defendants, including John Doe (unknown entities) from infringing Oberoi’s publicity or personality rights by utilizing, exploiting or misappropriating the unique and identifiable attributes of his persona, including his name, voice and image, without his consent or authorization.
The actor sought removal of post cards, posters, videos and social media posts. He has said that the defendants were impersonating him on social media platforms by creating fake accounts using his name and image, selling unauthorized merchandise, creating and disseminating AI-generated content and were using artificial intelligence and deepfake technology to morph and superimpose his face to create distasteful imagery.
In some cases, as per the suit, the impugned content is offensive, inappropriate and defamatory while in some cases they have the capability to supplant Oberoi’s market to benefit exclusively from their identity.
For context, coordinate benches have passed orders protecting personality rights of Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Pawan Kalyan, former cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, and actors R Madhavan and NTR Junior. Similar suit has been filed by actor Salman Khan.
The coordinate benches have also passed orders protecting the personality rights of “The Art of Living” foundation founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Telugu actor Nagarjuna, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and film producer Karan Johar.
Notably, the Court also recently protected the personality rights of journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, who had sought relief regarding the circulation of allegedly misleading and AI-generated videos against him on social media.
The Court also passed a john doe order protecting the personality rights of podcaster Raj Shamani, observing that he is a known face in India, especially in the field of content creation.
Title: Vivek Anand Oberoi v. Collector Bazar & Ors
Counsel for Oberoi: Ms. Sana Raees Khan, Mr. Pranay Chitale, Mr. Udayvir Rana, Mr. Aditya Dutta and Mr. Dhawesh Pahuja, Advocates
