Delhi High Court Protects Actor Naga Chaitanya's Personality Rights Against Pornographic Content, Unauthorised Merchandise

The Delhi High Court recently passed an ex parte ad interim order protecting the personality rights of Telugu actor Akkineni Naga Chaitanya.

Justice Jyoti Singh restrained several websites, online sellers and unidentified persons from exploiting the actor's name, image, voice, likeness and other personality attributes through pornographic content, AI-generated deepfakes and unauthorised merchandise.

The Court observed that the actor had established a prima facie case for protection of his personality and publicity rights and that continued dissemination of the impugned content would cause irreparable harm to his reputation and commercial interests.

Chaitanya's suit alleged that several pornographic websites were using his name as categories, tags and trending labels for obscene content, thereby creating a false and injurious association between the actor and such material.

He also complained of AI-generated content, defamatory videos and unauthorised sale of merchandise bearing his name, image and likeness.

The Court noted that the actor had built substantial goodwill and reputation over a career spanning more than 15 years and that the continued exploitation of his persona by third parties was causing reputational and commercial injury.

It observed that unauthorised sale of merchandise using a celebrity's identity could mislead consumers into believing that the celebrity endorsed or was affiliated with the products.

The Court further emphasised that a celebrity has the right to protect elements of his personality, including his name, likeness, voice and image, from unauthorised use.

“Plaintiff also has the right to protect his name, likeness, voice and image, which are elements and attributes of his persona and personality and no third party has a right to use these attributes without his authorisation,” the Court said.

“Plaintiff is entitled to protection against dissemination of pornographic content as well as AI-generated images portraying him in an inappropriate scenario. Such a distasteful content is harming and damaging the reputation of the Plaintiff and may mislead the public into believing what is depicted may be true. Plaintiff's right to restrain third parties from infringing and passing off also needs to be preserved,” it added.

Accordingly, the Court restrained the defendants from using or exploiting the actor's name, image, voice, likeness or any other attribute of his persona for commercial or personal gain, including through artificial intelligence, generative AI, machine learning, deepfakes, AI chatbots and face-morphing technologies.

The Court also directed removal of infringing merchandise listings and ordered pornographic websites to take down specific URLs.

Further, Google LLC was directed to remove identified YouTube links alleged to infringe the actor's personality rights.

Counsel for Plaintiff/actor: Mr. Vaibhav Gaggar, Senior Advocate with Mr. Somdev Tiwari, Mr. Akashdeep Gupta, Mr. Siddarth C., Mr. Abhishek Nair and Mr. Vansh Srivastav, Advocates

Counsel for Defendants: Ms. Mamta Rani Jha, Mr. Rohan Ahuja, Ms. Shruttima Ehersa and Ms. Sanya Sehgal, Advocates for D8

Title: AKKINENI NAGA CHAITANYA v. WWW.SEXVID.XXX & ORS

Click here to read order