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Informist, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025

 

NEW DELHI – The Delhi High Court has passed an interim injunction to protect the personality rights of actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. It has restrained a website, an application, an e-commerce platform, a chatbot, a YouTube channel, and others from violating her personality rights till the next date of hearing on Jan. 15. The court has also directed disabling of the uniform resource locator of the websites that infringe Rai Bachchan's personality rights.

 

The court said misuse of the actress's name, image, likeness, and other elements of her persona clearly constitutes infringement as the adoption of these attributes without authorisation from her will inevitably cause confusion and create a perception of endorsement by the petitioner. Further, irreparable loss, damage, and injury would be caused to Rai Bachchan's goodwill, reputation, and prestige if the interim injunction she had prayed for is not granted.

 

Justice Tejas Karia noted that personality rights of individuals entail the right to control and protect the exploitation of one's image, name, likeness, or other personality attributes, in addition to the commercial gains that can be derived from these attributes. Personality rights can be located in the individual's autonomy to permit or deny exploitation of the likeness of attributes of their personality, he said.

 

When the identity of a well-known personality is used without consent or authorisation, it may not only lead to commercial detriment to the individual concerned but could also affect the person's right to live with dignity, Justice Karia further said. He explained that unauthorised exploitation of the attributes of an individual's personality may have two facets--first, violation of their right to protect their personality attributes from being commercially exploited; second, violation of their right to privacy, which in turn leads to undermining their right to live with dignity. Courts, in cases of unauthorised exploitation of one's personality rights, cannot turn a blind eye to such acts and must protect the aggrieved parties so as to avert any harm to them from the unauthorised exploitation, he said.

 

The court observed that Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is one of the more celebrated personalities in the Indian entertainment industry, who has served various brands as ambassador and garnered significant goodwill and reputation such that members of the public repose their trust in brands endorsed by her. Any infringement of her personality rights, while causing confusion amongst members of the public regarding endorsement or sponsorship of a product or service by her, will also lead to dilution of her reputation and goodwill, it said.

 

The high court was hearing a suit filed by Rai Bachchan seeking a permanent injunction to restrain infringement of copyright, performer's rights, misappropriation of personality rights, passing off, and unfair competition. The petitioner said her personality rights, which include her name, image, signature, voice, likeness, and all other elements of her persona, have acquired a distinctiveness due to which they also have huge commercial value. Any third party using any of these elements of her persona was bound to cause confusion and deception amongst the general public, indicating affiliation with or sponsorship by her, the plaintiff said.

 

Wednesday, Abhishek Bachchan, actor and Rai Bachchan's husband, also moved the court seeking protection of his personality rights. Before this, his father, actor Amitabh Bachchan, had got protection of personality rights from the high court in 2022. Other notable actors who have got similar relief include Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf aka Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Rajeev Pai

 

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