Actor And Entrepreneur Vivek Oberoi Moves Delhi High Court Seeking Protection Of His Personality Rights

Actor and entrepreneur Vivek Oberoi has filed a suit before the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his personality rights.

Filed through Advocates Sana Raaes Khan and Pranay Chitale, the suit seeks to restrain various defendants, including John Doe (unknown entities) from infringing Oberoi's publicity or personality rights by utilizing, exploiting or misappropriating the unique and identifiable attributes of his persona, including his name, voice and image, without his consent or authorization.

The actor has sought removal of post cards, posters, videos and social media posts. He has said that the defendants were impersonating him on social media platforms by creating fake accounts using his name and image, selling unauthorized merchandise, creating and disseminating AI-generated content and were using artificial intelligence and deepfake technology to morph and superimpose his face to create distasteful imagery.

In some cases, as per the suit, the impugned content is offensive, inappropriate and defamatory while in some cases they have the capability to supplant Oberoi's market to benefit exclusively from their identity.

“As only the Plaintiff has control over the commercial utilization of his personality, name, image, likeness and other characteristics that are uniquely identifiable and associated with the Plaintiff, no one can utilize and/or misappropriate and/or imitate any facet of the Plaintiff's personality and/or exploit the same commercially in any manner whatsoever without the consent and/or express authorization of the Plaintiff,” the suit states.

For context, coordinate benches have passed orders protecting personality rights of Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Pawan Kalyan, former cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, and actors R Madhavan and NTR Junior. Similar suit has been filed by actor Salman Khan.

The coordinate benches have also passed orders protecting the personality rights of “The Art of Living” foundation founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Telugu actor Nagarjuna, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and film producer Karan Johar.

Notably, the Court also recently protected the personality rights of journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, who had sought relief regarding the circulation of allegedly misleading and AI-generated videos against him on social media.

The Court also passed a john doe order protecting the personality rights of podcaster Raj Shamani, observing that he is a known face in India, especially in the field of content creation.

Title: Vivek Anand Oberoi v. Collector Bazar & Ors