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Delhi high court protects personality rights of Bollywood actor Ajay Devgan
The Delhi high court has restrained various entities from commercially using Bollywood actor Ajay Devgan’s name, image, or voice without his consent
The Delhi high court on Thursday protected the personality rights of Bollywood actor Ajay Devgan by restraining various entities from commercially using his name, image, or voice without his consent.
A bench of Justice Manmeet PS Arora granted protection while dealing with the actor’s suit, which stated that various aspects of his persona were being misappropriated without his consent.
Devgan’s legal team highlighted that the actor’s persona was being exploited to promote paid appearances at events, sell merchandise, and even use AI tools to create deceptive deepfake images featuring him alongside other celebrities. His lawyers further contended that the actor’s persona was being misappropriated in obscene videos, causing serious harm to his reputation and goodwill.
Meta’s counsel requested the court to issue a tiered directive requiring the uploader to remove the content first. He said that the platform would step in and take appropriate action if the uploader failed to comply.
Considering the contentions, Justice Arora said that she would pass a detailed order, but directed a take-down of various deepfakes, including those showing him in an obscene manner with female celebrities.
However, the court at this stage declined to order the takedown of other content with Devgan’s images and fan pages without hearing the parties.
“You have to give some leeway to fan pages, they will not put a judge’s picture. This much freedom you will have to give your fans. Then you will have to take all the fan pages down. [Otherwise] he will have to erase his footsteps completely,” the court told the actor.
In May 2024, the court safeguarded the personality and publicity rights of veteran actor Jackie Shroff, observing that unauthorised merchandise sales and distorted videos appeared to generate commercial gain through “unauthorised exploitation”.
The court had similarly restrained the misuse of actor Anil Kapoor’s name, image, voice and signature “jhakaas” catchphrase in 2023. In November 2022, the high court protected veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan’s personality and publicity rights from infringement.
The court, in September this year, had also safeguarded filmmaker Karan Johar’s personality and publicity rights, and in October had protected the rights of Telugu actor Akkineni Nagarjuna and actor Hrithik Roshan. The court also came to the rescue of the Bachchan family by protecting the personality rights of Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
