Delhi HC protects Vivek Oberoi’s personality rights, orders takedown

Delhi High Court orders takedown of fake social media accounts, AI deepfakes and unauthorised content misusing actor Vivek Oberoi’s identity

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has passed orders to protect actor and entrepreneur Vivek Oberoi’s personality rights by restraining entities from using his name, image, and identity without his consent.

Vivek Oberoi accused entities of impersonating him on social media by creating fake accounts using his name and image, selling unauthorised merchandise, and producing and circulating AI-generated content

A bench of justice Tushar Rao Gedela on Thursday took up Oberoi’s suit for protection of his personality rights and said, “Yes, we’ll pass orders.”

Oberoi accused entities of impersonating him on social media by creating fake accounts using his name and image, selling unauthorised merchandise, and producing and circulating artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content.

The court observed that Oberoi is an accomplished and well-established actor, besides being a successful entrepreneur and humanitarian.

In its order released later, the court said that he holds rights over his personality attributes, including his image, likeness, voice, name, and signature, which are distinctive and exclusively associated with him, and thus directed various entities to take down the infringing content within 72 hours.

“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 bench said.

“As only the Plaintiff [Oberoi] has control over the commercial utilization of his personality, name, image, likeness and other characteristics that are uniquely identifiable and associated with the Plaintiff, no one can utilize and/or misappropriate and/or imitate any facet of the Plaintiff’s personality and/or exploit the same commercially in any manner whatsoever without the consent and/or express authorization of the Plaintiff,” the suit stated.

This year, the court protected the personality rights of senior advocate Vikas Pahwa. Last year, it protected the personality and publicity rights of filmmaker Karan Johar and actors Akkineni Nagarjuna, Salman Khan, Ajay Devgan, Hrithik Roshan, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.