Delhi High Court protects personality rights of actor Vijay Deverakonda

The Delhi High Court has directed the takedown of obscene online content, impersonation websites and unauthorised merchandise listings that violate various rights of actor Vijay Deverakonda [Vijay Sai Deverakonda Vs Ashok Kumar John Doe & Ors].

Justice Vikas Mahajan observed that Deverakonda’s personality traits have been used in an unauthorised manner to make commercial gains.

"A perusal of the infringing content enlisted in Annexure-A shows that there have been an unauthorised use of plaintiff’s name, image or other distinctive attributes for commercial purposes which constitutes an infringement of plaintiff’s personality rights, amounts to dilution of individual’s unique identity and leads to unearned commercial gain by others," the Court stated.

The Court passed the order on a suit filed by Deverakonda flagging content that impersonates him, as well as fake endorsements and fake websites that his counsel argued were misleading the public.

He also sought the takedown of obscene, defamatory and abusive content, including content created through artificial intelligence (AI), deepfakes and digital manipulation using the actor's personality traits.

In the suit, he highlighted that there are mobile apps available on Google Play Store that exploit his personality attributes without his consent.

He also flagged the unauthorised commercial exploitation of his personality rights in the sale of merchandise like t-shirts, mugs and other products.

He sought the takedown of such content and products from Meta platforms, X Corp, Google, Flipkart, Amazon, Meesho and Red Bubble.

Justice Mahajan issued summons on the suit and also sought a response from the defendants named in the case (social media intermediaries and those found circulating offensive content) on Deverakonda's plea for an interim injunction.

The Court directed Meta, Google and X to remove, disable access and permanently take down the infringing content identified by the actor in his suit.

It also directed e-commerce websites to take down listing of unauthorised merchandise within 72 hours of being communicated a copy of this order. It directed the Domain Name Registrars (DNRs) to lock and suspend the domains within 72 hours.

Further, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Department of Telecommunication are required to issue necessary directions to the concerned Internet Service Providers and Telecom Service Providers for blocking access to the infringer websites.

In the petition, the actor also sought an injunction on the use of the term “Rowdy”, stating that it is uniquely associated with him as an integral part of his persona and personality from the character played by him in the Telugu film ‘Arjun Reddy’.

While the Court refused to grant an ex-parte ad-interim injunction on the usage of the term “Rowdy” at this stage, it declared that the combined use of AI-generated morphed image of the actor along with the expression “Rowdy” will come within the ambit of violation of his personality rights.

The matter will be heard next on February 2, 2027.

Senior advocate Swathi Sukumar with advocates Rahul Kukreja, Sahil Raveen, Sahil Reddy, Jatin Shrivastava, Ritik Raghuwanshi, Rishika Aggarwal and Dhruv Kohli appeared for the actor.

Advocates Rohan Ahuja, Shruttima Ehersa, Aiswarya Debadarshini and Jahanvi Agarwal appeared for Google.

Advocates Abhijeet Shrivastava, Anshuman Shrivastava, Shashank S Dwivedi and Ananya Sahu appeared for Flipkart.

Advocates Vivek Ayyagari, Abhay Aren and Mishthi Dubey appeared for Meesho.

Advocates Anshuman Gupta and Karan Aggarwal appeared for Zedge.

[Read order]