The Delhi High Court has cautioned against the invocation of personality rights to extinguish caricature, lampooning, or parody which may not be commercially exploitative.
The court made the observation while granting protection to Physics Wallah founder Alakh Pandey against the use of his name, image, and other attributes from impersonation and monetisation by third parties.
The educator alleged that several internet platforms and users were monetising his name, image, etc, through social media posts, sticker packs, videos, websites, and suchlike means.
Some of this content was vulgar and sexually explicit, he contended.
In the interim order passed on August 5, Justice Anup J Bhambhani opined that he would grant protection to Pandey for three sets of violations: content that is sexually vulgar, content that monetises his personality without any licence, and impersonation.
“In the opinion of this court, the concept of personality rights as has been claimed in the present matter may be over broad and therefore susceptible to misapplication,” the court said.
The court said it wants to ensure that personality rights are not deployed to prevent dissemination of information in relation to wrongdoing, or to extinguish an entire genre of expression, including caricature, lampooning, or parody which may not amount to commercial exploitation of an individual’s personality or publicity rights.
“Proceeding from this word of caution, in the present case, the court is persuaded to grant protection to the plaintiff limited only to 03 sets of violations complained of in the plaint,” it said.
The court directed the online platforms to take down the offending content identified in the order.
Several public figures, such as actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Salman Khan, Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, podcaster Raj Shamani, Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, and cricketer Abhishek Sharma, have approached the high court seeking protection of their personality and publicity rights.
The high court granted them interim relief.
