Delhi High Court protects Hrithik Roshan's personality rights

The Delhi High Court has granted protection to the personality rights to Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan [Hrithik Roshan vs Ashok Kumar/John Doe & Ors.].

In an order passed on October 15, Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora restrained John Doe defendants (unknown entities) from utilising Hrithik Roshan’s name, likeness, image, voice, personality or any other aspects of his persona to create any merchandise, misuse using Artificial Intelligence, deep fakes, machine learning, face morphing or GIFs for commercial purpose.

The Court observed that the actor’s attributes are protectable elements of his personality rights against impersonation, false, obscene, morphed and distorted content.

“Prima facie the Plaintiff’s personality traits and/or parts thereof, including Plaintiff’s name Hrithik Roshan, voice, image, photograph, or likeness and other attributes are protectable elements of the Plaintiff’s personality rights. The Plaintiff is also entitled to protect itself against impersonation, false, obscene, morphed and distorted content created with the use of AI or otherwise, which is demeaning and lowers his reputation and goodwill,” the Court said.

Citing its observations made in similar cases concerning the personality rights of Bollywood personalities, Anil Kapoor, Karan Johar and Jackie Shroff, the Court stated that unauthorised exploitation of their personality rights for commercial gain can be protected by way of injunction.

The interim order would remain valid till March 27, 2026 when the matter is slated to be heard next.

Roshan moved the Court alleging that his personality rights were being exploited for commercial gain damaging his reputation by creating vulgar and obscene content with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

He sued certain websites, sellers and John Doe defendants for creating morphed images, memes, Artificial Intelligence generated vulgar and obscene content, selling merchandise that exploit his image, personality, voice and other attributes to deceive his fans for illegal profits.

Roshan also sued Markmonitor.Inc. for wrongly portraying to the public that he was the company's the founder. 

He stated that such unauthorised acts constitute violation of Copyright Act, 1957, the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and infringement of his right to privacy, goodwill, and reputation.

While hearing the matter, the Court specifically refrained at this stage from taking down Hrithik Roshan's fan pages.

"I cannot take down fan page at this stage. We will decide on their rights. We will ask for BSI details. Instagram is not only for commercialisation, people use it for fun. This is not defamatory. I understand commercialisation, obscene, morphed, but I do not understand take down of fan club pages," the Court stated.

The judge made it clear that fan pages do not amount to commercial use of his personality rights or defamation.

"This fan page does not appear to be commercial use. It is a fan page which he has created. People on Whatsapp use photos of celebrities. He is not making a commercial use. If a fan has used his creativity to create the post, we will hear him first. Let him be here. Ex parte injunction I will not grant. We will park this. I am not denying your relief," the Court stated.

"Does your client want all fan pages down? Is that your instruction? How are they monetising it on Facebook?" the Court asked Senior Advocate Sandeep Sethi appearing for Roshan.

Sethi highlighted existence of a dance tutorial club that uses his song and dance steps. The Court stated that such use of his song does not amount to commercial use.

"They are not using your name. It is a famous song of Hrithik Roshan which is being used as a demo and they will be teaching it. This is not commercial merchandise. They are using your performance to teach people. At this stage, I am not persuaded," the Court stated.

Advocate Varun Pathak, appearing for Meta, informed the Court that removal of entire fan pages or profiles may be disproportionate and only specific URLs infringing his personality rights may be taken down.

The Court eventually directed Google and Meta to provide the Basic Subscriber Information (BSI) details of the creators of the fan pages.

It also directed Roshan to implead the creators of fan pages as parties to the case.

The Court will hear the creators before any directions are passed against them.

The Court has also directed the e-commerce websites and Domain Name Registrants (DNRs) to provide BSI details of the users within three weeks. 

Senior Advocate Sandeep Sethi with advocates Nizam Pasha, Parag Khandhar, Chandrima Mitra, Krishan Kumar, Tapan Radkar, Pratyusha Dhoddha, Sidharth Kaushik and Shreya Sethi appeared for Roshan.

Advocates Varun Pathak, Varsha Jhavar and Sana Banyal appeared for Meta. 

Advocate Aditya Gupta appeared for Google.

Advocate Anushka Sarda appeared for Telegram.

Advocates Nitin Sharma and Angad S Makkar appeared for Ebay Inc. 

Advocates Vivek Ayyagari, Srishti Dhoundiyal and Manas Raghuvanshi appeared for Amazon.

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