Delhi High Court protects personality rights of actor Varun Dhawan

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has protected the personality rights of actor Varun Dhawan and restrained the unauthorised use of his name, image and other attributes by third parties for commercial or personal gain, and the creation of AI-generated deepfake images and derogatory content.

Justice Jyoti Singh, in an interim order passed on the film star's lawsuit, said Dhawan is a "celebrated actor" and has the "right to protect his name, likeness, voice and image" from unauthorised use by third parties.

The court ordered the defendants and online platforms to take down the offending content.

In case of any fresh content that infringes Dhawan's personality rights, the social media platforms, including YouTube and Meta, have been directed to take them down within 36 hours of communication, it added.

In the order dated May 29, the court said that Dhawan holds a registered trademark for his name and signatures, which gives him the statutory right to its exclusive use, and the unauthorised sale of merchandise using his name, image, likeness and other elements of his persona to make commercial gain is unlawful.

It also said content portraying him in inappropriate scenarios with female co-stars was extremely abusive and derogatory, which was causing irreparable damage to his immense goodwill and reputation.

"Plaintiff is entitled to protection against dissemination of pornographic content as well as AI-generated images portraying him in an inappropriate scenario. Such distasteful content is harming and damaging the reputation of the Plaintiff and may mislead the public into believing what is depicted may be true," observed the court.

Dhawan's senior counsel contended that there were third parties who were infringing his personality and publicity rights by falsely and unauthorisedly offering bookings for his appearances and performances, selling unauthorised merchandise bearing his name, face, image, signature/ autograph and the like, creating deepfake images and hosting pornographic content by using his name and image.

"Defendants No. 1 to 3, 5 to 8, 10 to 13 and 15... are restrained till the next date of hearing from violating Plaintiff’s Personality/ Publicity Rights by utilising and/ or in any manner directly or indirectly, using or exploiting or misappropriating Plaintiff's: (a) name Mr. Varun Dhawan; (b) image; (c) voice; and (d) likeness and/ or any other attribute of his persona, without his authorisation, for any commercial and/ or personal gain, through the use of technology including but not limited to Artificial Intelligence, GenerativeArtificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deepfakes, AI Chatbots, Face Morphing and/ or any other mediums and formats," the court ordered.

The court issued summons to the defendants in the lawsuit and listed it for further proceedings on August 5.

Several public figures like actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Salman Khan, Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary and podcaster Raj Shamani had earlier approached the high court seeking protection of their personality and publicity rights. The high court granted them interim relief.

Recently, the high court also protected the personality rights of politician Shashi Tharoor, cricketer Gautam Gambhir and actors Sonakshi Sinha, Vivek Oberoi, Arun Kapoor and Allu Arjun by granting interim relief.