Can an e-commerce platform print your face on coffee mugs and sell them without your permission? Can random online accounts use artificial intelligence to morph your body, clone your voice, and sell products online? The Delhi High Court has delivered a firm answer by stepping in to defend the personality rights of Telugu film star Vijay Deverakonda.
The Court Steps In to Stop Unauthorized Exploitation
Actor Vijay Deverakonda approached the Delhi High Court after noticing wide-scale misuse of his identity across the internet. Third parties were running fake websites, offering bogus endorsements, selling merchandise such as t-shirts and mugs, and even distributing mobile apps on the Google Play Store featuring his likeness without permission.
Worse, the actor pointed out that digital manipulators were creating obscene, defamatory content and deepfakes using his face. In his lawsuit, Deverakonda sought an immediate stop to these unauthorized activities, naming unknown infringers alongside major social media platforms and online retailers.
Hearing the suit titled Vijay Sai Deverakonda Vs Ashok Kumar John Doe & Ors, Justice Vikas Mahajan agreed that the actor’s distinct persona was being commercially exploited without consent. The court observed that using someone’s name, photograph, or distinctive attributes for commercial gain amounts to an infringement of their personality rights and dilutes their unique identity.
What Are Personality Rights Under Indian Law?
In simple terms, personality rights refer to an individual’s legal right to control the commercial use of their identity. This includes their name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, and other distinctive personal traits.
Unlike patents or trademarks, personality rights do not have a separate, standalone statute in India. Instead, Indian courts recognize personality rights under two main legal umbrellas:
- The Right to Privacy: An individual has the right to be left alone and protected from unauthorized public exposure, especially defamatory or obscene depictions.
- The Right of Publicity: A person—especially a celebrity who has built commercial value around their personal brand—has the exclusive right to license and profit from their own name and image.
When third parties copy an actor’s face onto merchandise or generate AI content to drive traffic to their own pages, they commit what the law calls an unearned commercial gain. They are essentially piggybacking on someone else’s hard work and goodwill without paying for a license.
The ‘Ashok Kumar’ or John Doe Order
One striking feature of Deverakonda’s petition is the inclusion of "Ashok Kumar" as a defendant. In Indian civil litigation, an Ashok Kumar order (equivalent to a John Doe order in western jurisdictions) is an injunction issued against unidentified individuals.
When copyright or personality rights violations happen on the internet, the original perpetrators often hide behind anonymous accounts, fake email addresses, and proxy servers. Waiting to identify every single seller or creator before filing a case would make legal relief impossible.
By passing an order against unknown infringers, the High Court allows the plaintiff to serve the injunction directly onto internet service providers, domain registrars, and social media intermediaries to take down infringing material instantly.
Strict Deadlines for Tech Giants and E-Commerce Portals
The High Court issued strict directives to curb the unauthorized circulation of Deverakonda’s likeness. Platforms like Meta (Instagram and Facebook), X Corp, and Google were directed to remove, disable access to, and permanently pull down the identified infringing content.
Online shopping platforms, including Flipkart, Amazon, Meesho, and Red Bubble, were ordered to remove listings of unauthorized merchandise within 72 hours of receiving the court order.
The court also directed Domain Name Registrars (DNRs) to lock and suspend rogue domains within 72 hours. To make sure rogue websites do not simply switch web addresses, the court required the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to direct telecom and internet service providers to block access to offending web portals.
The Dispute Over the Word ‘Rowdy’
An interesting aspect of Deverakonda’s plea involved the term "Rowdy". The actor argued that the term is uniquely associated with his persona, flowing from his character in the hit film Arjun Reddy, and requested an injunction barring others from using it.
The Delhi High Court declined to grant an interim injunction on the standalone word "Rowdy" at this stage. Common dictionary words or broad character descriptions cannot easily be monopolized through an initial order.
However, the court made a crucial distinction: the combined use of an AI-generated morphed image of the actor along with the word "Rowdy" clearly violates his personality rights. Context matters in intellectual property, and blending a generic word with someone’s recognizable face creates false association in the minds of consumers.
What The Law Says
When individuals approach civil courts to protect their likeness, they generally seek relief under the following legal frameworks:
- Order 39, Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC): Allows courts to grant temporary injunctions to prevent the defendant from wasting, damaging, or alienating property, or committing any other injury to the plaintiff.
- The Law of Torts (Passing Off): Under common law, no one has the right to represent their goods as the goods of somebody else, or pretend that an item carries an endorsement that was never given.
- The Information Technology Act, 2000 and IT Rules, 2021: Intermediaries (such as social networks and e-commerce aggregators) enjoy safe harbor protection only if they act promptly upon receiving actual knowledge or court orders directing the removal of unlawful content.
Why This Matters For Creators and Everyday Citizens
This ruling comes at a time when generative AI tools make it effortless to clone voices, generate synthetic videos, and create convincing deepfakes. While prominent actors have the resources to approach High Courts, this line of judicial rulings establishes vital precedents that protect everyone from non-consensual digital manipulation.
For entrepreneurs, fan pages, and small print-on-demand sellers, the message from the courts is straightforward: using a celebrity’s identity, face, or voice to sell a product without a formal licensing agreement is unlawful commercial exploitation.
The legal boundary between admiring a celebrity and monetizing their identity is crystal clear: respect their personality rights or risk immediate takedowns and court penalties.
Story reported by Barandbench. This article is BareLaw’s independent explanation and analysis.
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