The Delhi High Court on Monday passed an interim injunction protecting the personality rights of actor R. Madhavan, restraining the sale of commercial merchandise using his image and likeness.
Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora passed the ad interim injunction, restraining misuse of the actor’s personality traits, including his name, image and likeness, legal news portal Live Law reported.
Advocate Swathi Sukumar, appearing for Madhavan, took the court through details of defendants who had posted deepfake and AI-generated content relating to the actor, including fake trailers.
She told the court that the actor had already approached social media platforms against the infringing material prior to filing the suit.
This was after the judge had recently clarified that individuals seeking urgent takedown of objectionable online content must first approach social media platforms before directly seeking a judicial injunction.
“Issue injunction qua sale of merchandise qua 1,3 and 4 of the list and qua 2 on the ground of obscenity,” the judge said while granting the relief.
Similar suits have been filed by Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, cricketer Sunil Gavaskar and actors Salman Khan and NTR Junior.
Coordinate benches of the high court have also passed orders protecting the personality rights of The Art of Living foundation founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Telugu actor Nagarjuna, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan, and film producer Karan Johar.
Justice Arora had recently protected the personality rights of journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, who had sought relief over the circulation of allegedly misleading and AI-generated videos against him on social media.
The judge has also passed a John Doe order protecting the personality rights of podcaster Raj Shamani, observing that he is a known face in India, particularly in the field of content creation.