Karan Johar's legal team on personality rights suit: Obscene content circulated
The filmmaker's Chief Legal Officer for his production house Rakhee Bajpai Tiwari on him being granted relief by the Delhi High Court
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday indicated that it would pass an order granting interim injunction in favour of filmmaker and producer Karan Johar seeking protection of his personality and publicity rights. Karan has been granted relief after he complained about the misuse of his name, voice and photos on social media. Before moving court, he had raised concerns about websites and social media platforms selling merchandise — mugs, t-shirts, or using his name, photo or likeness without his permission. He also flagged issues with fake profiles, impersonation, domain name misuse and disparaging memes that exploited his persona for commercial gain.
Speaking to us about why the filmmaker decided to go to court to protect his personality rights, Chief Legal Officer for his production house, Rakhee Bajpai Tiwari told us, "There is a lot of infringing, obscene and defamatory content made using Karan's name, personal attributes and other identifiable unique elements. Hence the suit was filed to seek protection . The court has granted most of the reliefs sought in the suit. Going forward, there will be an injunction (a judicial order restraining a person from beginning or continuing an action threatening or invading the legal right of another) on the infringing and defamatory content and those will need to be taken down by the infringers. There has been an increase in infringement due to the AI boom, resulting in deepfakes."
Speaking about why celebs like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan too decided to protect their personality rights, she says, "There has been an increase in misuse of celebrity names and attributes for unauthorised commercial gain and to create infringing defamatory content hence its the need of the hour."
