Delhi High Court protects Baba Ramdev's personality rights

The Delhi High Court recently passed an interim order protecting the personality rights of Baba Ramdev [Baba Ramdev v John Doe(s) and Ors].

Justice Jyoti Singh has restrained the unauthorised use of his name, image, voice and other personality attributes across digital platforms, including AI-generated content and deepfakes.

The Court also directed the e-commerce platforms and social media intermediaries -- Google, Meta and X -- to take down specified URLs infringing on Ramdev's personality rights within 72 hours.

Ramdev has filed a personality rights suit seeking protection of his voice, image, likeness, unique style of discourse and delivery and other attributes exclusively identifiable with him.

He has sought directions to stop unauthorised use of his names "Ramdev”, “Swami Ramdev” “, Baba Ramdev”, “Yog Guru Ramdev”, “Yog Guru Swami Ramdev” and other abbreviations, monikers or titles.

The suit states that his name, visage and persona enjoy extraordinary goodwill and trust, which several entities are exploiting through deepfakes, false endorsements and unauthorised commercial associations.

Further, the suit states that his persona was being used to create content for amusement and online engagement.

Notably, the social media intermediaries had on February 17 argued that Ramdev was using the personality rights suit to remove criticism from the internet.

The submissions were opposed by Ramdev, who said that the intermediaries are expected be neutral, but in this case, they were fiercely opposed to his prayers.

After considering the case, the court noted that Ramdev is a prominent public figure and had established substantial goodwill over decades.

Justice Singh observed that unauthorised commercial exploitation of a public figure’s persona, particularly through AI manipulation, could amount to misappropriation and passing off.

She added that some of the digitally created publications contain messages or endorsements in Ramdev's name, likeness and voice, which affect his public image and may tarnish his credibility and undermine the trust reposed in him.

"The posts/uploads etc. have the potential to mislead the public into believing that the accounts are the authorised and official accounts of the Plaintiff. It is a plausible contention that some of the infringing content which falsely projects that Plaintiff is endorsing medicines or health-related products and/or giving advice, can be detrimental not only to his reputation but the misinformation can lead to serious and adverse consequences to public interest, if the members of the public were to believe the endorsements or buy the products and/or follow the advice," the Court added.

Therefore, it passed an order protecting Ramdev's personality rights.  

Senior Advocate Rajiv Nayar with advocates Rahul S Sahay, Simranjeet Singh, Rishabh Pant, Osheen Verma, Abhijeet Kumar Pandey, Apurbaa Dutta, Raghav Rajmalani, Prabhav Bahuguna, Naman Maheshwari and Pratham Arora appeared for Ramdev.

Advocates Mamta Rani Jha, Rohan Ahuja, Shruttima Ehersa and Ankit Tripathi represented Google.

X (formerly Twitter) was represented through advocates Ankit Parashar, Abhishek Kumar, Tejpal Singh Rathore,Tanish Gupta and Sanchli Sethi.

Advocates Akshay Maloo, Vivek Ayyagari and Gynendra Rathore represented Amazon.

Zee Media was represented through advocates Angad Singh Dugal, Govind Singh Grewal and Jagtej Singh Kang.

Advocates Sahil represented the Indian Express.

Central Government Standing Counsel (CGSC) Satya Ranjan Swain along with advocates Kautilya Birat, Ankush Kapoor and Vishwadeep represented MEITY and DoT.

[Read Order]