{"id":1002,"date":"2023-10-16T13:55:54","date_gmt":"2023-10-16T08:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2023-10-16T13:55:54","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T08:25:54","slug":"delhi-hc-passes-ex-parte-injunction-order-to-protect-personality-rights-of-anil-kapoor-against-unauthorized-usage-on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/delhi-hc-passes-ex-parte-injunction-order-to-protect-personality-rights-of-anil-kapoor-against-unauthorized-usage-on-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Delhi HC passes ex-parte injunction order to protect Personality rights of Anil Kapoor against unauthorized usage on the internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANIL KAPOOR (<\/strong>Plaintiff) Vs. <\/strong>SIMPLY LIFE INDIA & ORS. (<\/strong>Defendants)<\/h1>\n

CS(COMM) 652\/2023 and I.A. 18237\/2023-18243\/2023<\/strong>
\n(JUSTICE PRATHIBA M. SINGH)<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Facts:<\/u><\/strong> The Plaintiff- Mr. Anil Kapoor, a well-known Indian actor, has filed the present suit seeking protection of his own name, image, likeness, persona, voice and various other attributes of his personality against misuse of all hues over the internet. It is his case that his name and persona, apart from having immense commercial value, is liable to be protected against misuse and tarnishment over the internet. In the present suit, the Plaintiff seeks protection of his personality rights, publicity rights and elements associated with his persona such as His name; His voice; His photograph\/image\/likeness; His manner of speaking and dialogue delivery; His gestures; His signatures etc<\/p>\n

Issue:<\/u><\/strong> Whether the personality rights of the plaintiff deserve to be protected against unauthorized usage by defendents?<\/p>\n

Arguments on behalf of counsel for plaintiff:<\/u><\/strong> Mr. Anand<\/p>\n

Counsel appearing for the Plaintiff has relied upon a few decisions of foreign courts and Indian courts to argue that elements of a personality such as name, image, likeness, voice, and other attributes are protectable elements. Another recent development that has been brought to the notice of the Court are the proposed guidelines titled \u2018Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns 2023\u2019 issued under Section 18 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, seeking to protect consumers against what is termed as \u201cdark patterns\u201d. Such dark patterns include practices on the internet that are deceptive in nature in order to somehow mislead and trick the consumers, and subvert or impair their decision-making skills, which is violative of consumer rights. The Plaintiff has placed some additional documents on record which show that images of other well-known celebrities are being used in a manner that is totally offensive to their personalities, for example, \u2018Gandhi Ji with a gun\u2019. Such images, though, may constitute satire for some people, would be offensive to the society in general. The Plaintiff also claims that the expression \u2018Jhakaas\u2019, which is a Marathi slang word, roughly translated as \u2018fantastic\u2019, \u2018awesome\u2019 or \u2018superb\u2019 in English, was popularized by him through one of his Hindi movies, namely \u2018Yudh\u2019. The rights claimed by the Plaintiff, in the present suit, are stated below:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Personality rights, including right to publicity<\/li>\n
  2. Copyright in the dialogue, image as also in other associated works;<\/li>\n
  3. Common law rights including the right to be protected against passing off, dilution and unfair competition.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Arguments on behalf of counsel for defendents:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Ld. Counsel for Defendant No.19 submits that Defendant No.18- Domains by Proxy LLC would not be necessary as a party, as Defendant No.19 has the control over the domain name www.anilkapoor.com. Accordingly, Defendant No.18 is deleted as a party.<\/p>\n

    Held:<\/u><\/strong> The court held that, \u201cthe Plaintiff\u2019s name, likeness, image, persona, etc., deserves to be protected, not only for Plaintiff\u2019s own sake but also for the sake of his family and friends who would not like to see his image, name and other elements being misused, especially for such tarnishing and negative use.\u201d <\/em>Therefore, the relief of grant of an ex parte<\/em> injunction was passed in favour of plaintiff, stating that, \u201cBalance of convenience lies in favour of the Plaintiff in the present case considering that the Defendants are infringing his personality rights as well as right to privacy. If an injunction is not granted in the present case, it will lead to irreparable loss\/harm to the Plaintiff and his family, not only financially but also with his right to live with dignity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

    The court observed that, \u201cThe Court cannot turn a blind eye to misuse of a personality\u2019s name and other elements of his persona. Dilution, tarnishment, blurring are all actionable torts which the Plaintiff would have to be protected against. Even the domain names that have been registered are just being squatted upon, and there can be no reason why the same could be allowed to be squatted upon. The creation of ringtones and GIF images for commercial gains would also be a complete misuse of Plaintiff\u2019s rights.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

    Therefore, the court restrainted Defendant Nos.1 to 16 or anyone acting for or on their behalf from utilizing the Plaintiff-Anil Kapoor\u2019s name, likeness, image, voice, personality or any other aspects of his persona to create any merchandise, ringtones, ring back tones, or in any other manner misuse the said attributes using technological tools such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, deep fakes, face morphing, GIFs either for monetary gains or otherwise to create any videos, photographs, etc., for commercial purposes, so as to result in violation of the Plaintiff\u2019s rights. Defendant No.17-PDR Ltd., Defendant No.19-GoDaddyLLC and Defendant No.20-Dynadot LLC are directed to immediately lock and suspend the domain names www.anilkapoor.in, www.anilkapoor.net and www.anilkapoor.com.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    ANIL KAPOOR (Plaintiff) Vs. SIMPLY LIFE INDIA & ORS. (Defendants) CS(COMM) 652\/2023 and I.A. 18237\/2023-18243\/2023 (JUSTICE PRATHIBA M. SINGH)   Facts: The Plaintiff- Mr. Anil Kapoor, a well-known Indian actor, has filed the present suit seeking protection of his own name, image, likeness, persona, voice and various other attributes of his personality against misuse of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judgement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1005,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}