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Aishwarya Rai's appeal to Delhi HC: 'Restrain people from using my name, images'
A bench of justice Tejas Karia also said that he would issue further directions for the takedown of URLs infringing upon the actor's personality rights.
The Delhi High Court on Tuesday indicated that it will pass an order protecting the misuse of Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s personality and publicity rights by restraining various entities from commercially using her name, image, and voice without her consent.
A bench of justice Tejas Karia also said that he would issue further directions for the takedown of URLs infringing upon Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s personality rights.
“We’ll pass an order against each of the defendants (to take down the URLs), because prayers are broad. But we will grant injunctions separately,” Justice Karia said.
The high court expressed its intentions to safeguard the actor’s right, while dealing with a suit filed by her seeking protection of her name, image, person, voice and various other distinctive attributes of her personality.
Her suit, filed through advocates Pravin Anand and Dhruv Anand, stated that various entities were infringing her publicity and personality rights by using her name, voice, and video for illegal commercial purposes, and her image was also being morphed in various pornographic videos.
“Her name and image are being used to satisfy someone’s sexual desires,” senior advocate Sandeep Sethi representing the actor submitted.
To be sure, this is not the first time a Bollywood actor has approached the high court seeking protection of their personality and publicity rights.
In May last year, the court had safeguarded the personality and publicity rights of Bollywood veteran Jackie Shroff, observing that activities such as selling merchandise featuring him and creating distorted videos of the actor appeared, prima facie, to generate commercial gain through the “unauthorised exploitation” of his personality and publicity rights.
In 2023, the court had restrained the misuse of name, image, voice and other attributes of persona, including the “jhakaas” catchphrase of actor Anil Kapoor for commercial gain. In November 2022, the high court had also restrained persons at large from infringing veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan’s personality and publicity rights.
