Delhi high court extends personality rights protection to actor Nagarjuna Akkineni

The court was hearing a Nagarjuna’s suit seeking protection of his name, image, voice and other distinctive personality attributes

The Delhi high court on Thursday said that it will pass orders safeguarding Telugu actor Akkineni Nagarjuna’s personality and publicity rights, restraining entities from commercially exploiting his name, image and voice without consent.

Nagarjuna had asserted that his persona was being misused for selling merchandise for illegal commercial purposes. (Facebook | Akkineni Nagarjuna)

Justice Tejas Karia said the court would also direct the takedown of URLs infringing upon the actor’s personality rights. “When you can identify the URL’s… the best is to direct them to take down… We’ll pass orders,” justice Karia said.

The court was hearing a Nagarjuna’s suit seeking protection of his name, image, voice and other distinctive personality attributes.

In his suit, argued by senior advocate Vaibhav Gaggar, advocates Pravin Anand and Dhruv Anand, Nagarjuna had asserted that his persona was being misused for selling merchandise for illegal commercial purposes, image has also been morphed in pornographic content and artificial intelligence was being deployed for creating videos on YouTube.

In May 2024, the court safeguarded veteran actor Jackie Shroff’s personality and publicity rights, 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 earlier this month had also safeguarded Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan’s, filmmaker Karan Johar’s personality and publicity rights, concluding that unauthorised use of a celebrity’s identity not only causes commercial harm but also infringes upon their right to live with dignity.

In Johar’s case, the court had also directed take down of obscene memes, social media posts, from various social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube, remarking that unauthorised use of celebrity’s persona for creating such content, tarnished the celebrity’s goodwill.