Shark Tank's Aman Gupta gets relief from Delhi HC against obscene content, unauthorised merchandise sale

The Delhi High Court has ordered social media intermediaries and search engines including Telegram, Meta Platforms and Google to take down online content found to be violating the registered trademarks and personality rights of Aman Gupta, judge on Shark Tank India and co-founder of boAt Lifestyle.

Justice Tushar Rao Gedela on May 7 passed an ex-parte interim injunction order to protect Gupta's personality rights after hearing a suit against unauthorised commercial exploitation of his personality and trademark rights by unknown persons.

"The manner in which the defendants are exploiting his name, voice, persona, slogans, registered trade marks of the plaintiff positively assert the underlying fact of plaintiffs’ personality which are exclusive to him and none else. At this stage, these qualities and the aforesaid attributes are sufficient for the Court to prima facie reach an opinion that the registered trade marks and the personality rights of the plaintiff are being infringed," the Court said.

Senior Advocate Diya Kapur with advocate Nakul Gandhi submitted before the Court that Gupta has sought an injunction on circulation of AI-generated deepfakes, pornographic content and morphed videos. 

The Court was told that unknown entities were operating fraudulent event booking platforms and AI chatbots to falsely portray association with Gupta.

The Court noted that in a short span Gupta has achieved various milestones and is an “astute business person”. It added that Gupta has established substantial goodwill and recognition, warranting protection of his personality and trademark rights.

The Court also said that the circulation of fake sexually explicit content about Gupta needs immediate and urgent court attention.

"However, it is not to say that the issue of personality rights is unnecessary in such circumstances as the only motive to create such sexually explicit videos etc. could possibly be for unlawful financial gains and resulting in unjust enrichment," the Bench said.

Observing that the unknown defendants were prima facie involved in exploiting Gupta’s personality traits which are exclusive to him, the Court granted an interim injunction restraining the creation and circulation of the infringing material.

The Court also restrained infringement of Gupta's registered trademarks "Hum Bhi Bana Lenge” and "Down, But Not Out!"

The Court directed Telegram, Meta Platforms and Google to take down the infringing content specifically mentioned in Gupta’s suit.

Further, the Court directed the social media intermediaries to disclose the mobile number, username and email of the users uploading the infringing material through their accounts.

It also granted a liberty to Gupta to approach the Court against new infringers not mentioned in this suit, in order to extend this injunction order on them.

Additionally, the Court allowed Gupta to directly approach the social media intermediaries to seek redressal. The Court directed these social media platforms to immediately lock or suspend the new infringers domain name registrations in the event Gupta informs them.

The matter will be heard next on October 1.

Senior Advocate Diya Kapur with advocates Nakul Gandhi, Mujeeb, Siddhi Sahoo, Gurdeep Singh, Raghav Kumar and Naibedya Amrit Dash appeared for Aman Gupta.

Advocates Varun Pathak, Sana Banyal and Debditya Saha appeared for Meta Platform.

Advocates Mamta Rani Jha, Rohan Ahuja, Shruttima Ehersa and Ankit Tripathi appeared for Google LLC.

Central government standing counsel Satya Ranjan Swain with advocates Naveen and Kautilya Birat appeared for Union of India.

[Read Order]