Madras High Court Passes John Doe Order Protecting Actor Kamal Haasan's Personality Rights, But No Bar On Satire

After hearing the matter for some time, Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy in his order dictated:

"Senior counsel (for plaintiff) invited my attention to several photographs of morphed images. Submits that these images are causing incalculable damage to his reputation and image as celebrity Counsel also refers to the use of plaintiff's image, name and the like on merchandise without the plaintiff's consent or endorsement. Upon examining the above, a strong prima facie case is made out. Therefore, the respondents are restrained from creating false images of the plaintiff and depicting the same through any media until next hearing. Respondent also restrained from selling merchandise bearing plaintiff's name or image without consent or endorsement. This order will not however stand in the way of caricature, satire or other forms of permissible creative expression."

The court said that since a john doe has been added as second respondent to the plaint, the plaintiff was directed to give public notice regarding the court order in English and Tamil newspapers.

Appearing for the actor Senior Advocate Satish Parasaran on behalf of advocate Vijayan Subramanian, said that he was seeking a "john doe order", adding that the entities were "commercially merchandising" Haasan's image illegally.

At this stage the court orally said, "In these matters, we also need to be mindful that there's freedom of expression. Things like caricature, satire are all expression".

But to this Parasan said that there can be "no commercial exploitation" while one exercises freedom of expression and in the present case's Haasan was being commercially exploited. 

Kamal had approached the court seeking to restrain third parties from exploiting his personality rights and moral rights for commercial gain. The court had last year, protected the personality rights of musician Ilaiyaraaja also.

Kamal submitted that he had a career spanning over 65 years with acclaimed works in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada, and Bengali languages for which he has been conferred with 4 national awards, twenty Filmfare awards, eleven Tamil Nadu state film awards, and four Nandi awards. Apart from these, Kamal has also been honoured with the Kalaimamani, Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier).

Kamal further submitted that through his decades of goodwill and artistic integrity, his endorsements carry a significant commercial weightage and trust among the audience. He submitted that his commercial endorsements are done through the utilisation of attributes of his personality such as his name, signature, voice, image, and other uniquely identifiable characteristics associated with him.

Kamal stated that his distinctive features including name, signature, voice etc are protectable rights under Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution (Right to Privacy), the Copyright Act, and the common law. He argued that no person would be entitled to utilise, misappropriate or imitate any facets of his personality right in any manner without his authorisation/prior approval.

Kamal pointed out that some websites had been selling T-shirts bearing his name and photograph, which would give an impression that it is being authorised by him. He also added that websites were morphing his face into videos and using artificial intelligence to create false and misleading image and videos which were sometimes sexually explicit and vulgar. It was pointed out that these websites were also making commercial gain out of these contents.

Kamal had thus sought a John Doe relief restraining third parties from using his distinctive features without prior approval or authorisation for their commercial gain.