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Delhi high court protects Bollywood actor Jaya Bachchan’s personality rights
A bench of Justice Manmeet PS Arora, who was due to pass a detailed order, said she would not immediately restrict the use of her images on movie posters
The Delhi high court on Monday protected parliamentarian and Bollywood actor Jaya Bachchan’s personality rights, restraining entities from commercially using her name, image, or voice without consent.
A bench of Justice Manmeet PS Arora, who was due to pass a detailed order, said she would not immediately restrict the use of Jaya Bachchan’s images on movie posters, noting that the copyright for such posters belongs to the film’s owner.
“How do you claim copyright in the movie posters? Copyright vests in whoever is the owner of the movie... not even hurting you. You don’t even have any copyright... Let them be here. I’m not persuaded. This is a poster. Let that party be here. We’ll hear him out and we’ll see. I’m not convinced,” Justice Arora said.
The court passed the order in suits for safeguarding Jaya Bachchan’s publicity rights, arguing that her persona was misused for selling merchandise for illegal commercial purposes. Her lawyer, Sandeep Sethi, argued that apart from exploiting her persona to sell merchandise, several entities were also using it to create AI-generated videos and sexually explicit material.
The court has this year safeguarded the personality and publicity rights of actors Jackie Shroff, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Akkineni Nagarjuna, Hrithik Roshan, and filmmaker Karan Johar.
The court similarly restrained the misuse of actor Anil Kapoor’s name, image, voice, and signature “jhakaas” catchphrase in 2023. In November 2022, the court protected veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan’s personality and publicity rights from infringement.
