Pawan Kalyan’s personality rights suit: Delhi HC grants injunction
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New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has granted an ad-interim injunction in favour of actor and Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, restraining multiple online marketplaces, AI platforms, websites, and unidentified entities from misusing his name, image, voice, likeness, and other attributes of his personality for commercial gain, IANS reported.
A single-judge Bench of Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora passed the ex parte order in a suit filed by Kalyan seeking protection of his personality and publicity rights against unauthorised merchandise, impersonation, AI-generated content, deepfakes, and misleading online listings.
In its order, the Delhi HC noted that Kalyan, a prominent public figure with a distinguished career in Telugu cinema and public life, has acquired substantial commercial brand value associated with his name, image, voice, and persona over nearly three decades.
The court observed that Kalyan's celebrity status inherently grants him proprietary rights over his personality attributes.
According to the plea, several entities were exploiting Kalyan's persona without consent by selling merchandise such as T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, posters, and stickers, running misleading event listings, hosting impersonation pages on social media, and enabling AI tools to generate synthetic voice, images, and conversational outputs in his name.
The Delhi High Court observed that the unauthorised use of the plaintiff’s attributes amounted to a violation of his personality rights and that continued availability of such content would cause irreparable injury.
"The balance of convenience lies in favour of the plaintiff, and the continuing availability of the infringing content would cause irreparable injury to the plaintiff," Justice Arora said while granting interim protection. The Delhi HC restrained identified infringing defendants as well as John Doe entities from directly or indirectly using or exploiting Kalyan's name, image, likeness, or voice for any commercial purpose, including through artificial intelligence, generative AI, or deepfakes, without his consent.
It also directed e-commerce platforms, including Flipkart, Amazon, and Meesho, to delist infringing products and disclose KYC details of sellers to the plaintiff.