Personality protection by public figures is on the rise. Apart from financial losses, there's always the risk of their reputation being at stake too. And taking cognizance of it, it's actor Shilpa Shetty Kundra who has taken the same step.
HT City has exclusively learnt that the actor, who has enjoyed a long career in India, apart from winning the international show Big Brother in 2007, has filed a suit in the Bombay High Court, asking for her personality protection rights. The suit, we learn, has named several websites, which used her pictures illegally for promoting different things. Not just this, even her morphed pictures and videos have come under the scanner. The known defendants are 27 and unknown defendants are covered in John Doe. These run into hundreds, we are told.
Also read: Why stars are turning to courts for personality rights
Advocate Sana Raees Khan, who has filed the suit for Shilpa, tells us, “Ms. Shilpa Shetty has built her reputation over decades of work and no entity can appropriate her name or likeness without consent. The unauthorised commercial exploitation of her identity is an outright assault on her dignity and hard earned reputation. No individual or platform has the right to exploit her reputation for unlawful commercial gain and we will ensure strict enforcement of her personality rights. We have moved the Bombay High Court to put a stop to such misuse and to safeguard her identity from being treated as a commodity.”