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From Amitabh Bachchan to Janhvi Kapoor: How Delhi HC is redefining protection of celebrity identity
The nature of this litigation has evolved, with courts taking a more nuanced and narrow approach to the personality rights of celebrities
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For years, the Delhi high court has played a central role in protecting the personality and publicity rights of celebrities including Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan, Karan Johar and Nagarjuna, by granting broad interim injunctions against the unauthorised use of their names, images, voices and likenesses.
But the nature of this litigation has evolved, with the court now taking a more nuanced and narrow approach to such claims and examining what a personality rights suit can protect, particularly when the prayers in the petitions extend into areas such as defamation and satire.
This shift has come into focus in suits filed by actors Janhvi Kapoor and Vivek Oberoi. In July and September. Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani appointed amicus curiae in the two matters to assist the court in examining broader questions surrounding publicity and personality rights. In a separate case filed by Aaradhya Bachchan, justice Bhambhani also framed questions on whether a family name can constitute intellectual property and, if so, what legal protection it may be entitled to.
The three cases are being heard together, due to the overlap of in the legal issues involved.
From automatic restraints to scrutiny
The evolution of the Delhi high court’s position reflects a transition from issuing broad interim protections against unauthorised commercial use of a celebrity’s persona to defining the outer limits of individual persona protection.
In 2022, the court protected the personality rights of bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan by granting an ex parte ad-interim protection against entities using his persona to promote goods and services. The court later granted similar broad protections to Anil Kapoor in 2023, and to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, and Karan Johar in 2025.
A more cautious approach, however, was visible in Jackie Shroff’s 2024 suit, when the court declined to order the immediate removal of a YouTube video that allegedly used his photographs and interviews in a creative presentation. The court cautioned that restricting such expression could have implications for free speech and the growing community of content creators.
The distinction became more explicit when justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani, on August 5 in a suit filed by PhysicsWallah founder Alakh Pandey, observed that personality rights could not be invoked to suppress information concerning wrongdoing or to restrict forms of expression such as caricature, lampooning and parody where there is no commercial exploitation of an individual’s persona.
A significant turn came in Janhvi Kapoor’s suit, where the actor sought removal of 6,684 URLs covering different categories of content. Around the same time, the court was also examining the personality-rights suit filed by Vivek Oberoi, in which questions had arisen over the inclusion of URLs allegedly unrelated to his personality rights.
Court flags overreach in online takedowns
The questions became more pronounced in the proceedings involving Oberoi and Kapoor.
On July 28, the court appointed advocate Rohan Alva as amicus curiae in Vivek Oberoi’s personality-rights suit when Oberoi’s lawyer withdrew from the case An amicus curiae, or “friend of the court”, is an independent person appointed to assist the court with legal arguments or expertise in a case.
The appointment came while the court was considering X Corp’s plea to delete two URLs from the scope of the February 5 ex parte ad-interim order, on the ground that they had no connection with Oberoi’s personality rights and constituted innocuous user expression protected as free speech. Other defendants similarly alleged that Oberoi misused the process of the court by including unrelated URLs in the injunction and sought to prevent dissemination of information concerning alleged wrongdoing involving a company with which he was associated.
On August 11, justice Bhambhani declined Janhvi Kapoor’s plea to issue a blanket order injuncting or directing removal or take down of 6,684 URLs across various categories saying that the relief sought was “over broad” but ordered take down of 522 URLs since they appeared to be grossly sexually vulgur and did not carry the actor’s permission.
The court questioned the actor for seeking a blanket injunction against fan pages allegedly exploiting her personality rights without her consent, saying that while pages using her persona for monetisation or commercial exploitation could be ordered to be taken down, a blanket restraint covering all such content, including criticism and satire, would not be an appropriate approach. The high court also added that as a public personality in the digital age, Kapoor could not expect to remain insulated and she would find herself living in a cave, in the absence of comments, URL’s.
This was after Meta’s lawyer argued that the individuals running the fan pages had expressly identified them as such and were also entitled to earn a livelihood and not all the URLs contained profane or obscene material.
On September 3, justice Bhambhani appointed advocate Gautam Bhatia as amicus curiae to assist it in Jhanvi’s suit, saying that it would decide the broader issues involved in the matters concerning publicity rights, especially where such matters involve over broad prayers touching upon other elements like defamation or satire.
To be sure, justice Bhambhani, on August 13 while dealing with Aaradhya Bachchan’s suit filed in 2023, also framed a series of broader questions: whether a family name can constitute intellectual property and, if so, what legal protection it is entitled to; whether fake news about a person can amount to a violation of any intellectual property right and, if so, which one; and whether the jurisprudential concepts of defamation, including slander and libel, or other forms of injury to reputation, can be conflated with intellectual property rights.
This was after Bachchan’s lawyer Pravin Anand, argued that a ‘family name’ carries a reputation akin to a trademark and since a trademark is an asset in itself, reputation is attached to that asset.
The high court’s exercise signals a broader judicial effort to define the boundaries of these rights, determine where protection of a celebrity’s persona ends and other legal or constitutional interests begin, and, provide greater clarity on the contours of a legal framework in the absence of express statutory recognition of personality or publicity rights in India.
