Kamal Ghorui
The Delhi High Court has granted interim relief to Telugu star Allu Arjun, issuing an ex parte ad-interim order that safeguards his personality rights against unauthorised commercial use. The order restrains several parties from exploiting his identity through artificial intelligence, including deepfakes, as well as from selling infringing merchandise.Presiding over the matter, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela said that the actor’s name, image, voice, dialogue delivery, gestures, and other distinctive traits are uniquely associated with him and qualify as protectable personality rights, according to Bar and Bench. The ruling came in response to a suit filed by the actor, challenging the unauthorised use of his persona for commercial gain without his consent.Acknowledging his widespread popularity, the Court observed that Arjun’s iconic dialogues and distinctive style reinforce his stature. “The aforesaid documentary evidence etc. clearly demonstrates that the unique and distinctive attributes of the plaintiff are exclusive to the plaintiff and are source identifiers of the plaintiff. The attributes such as name, appearance, voice, manner of delivery dialogues, gestures, attires, speech, signature, likeness would clearly constitute copyrights of the plaintiff over which none other than the plaintiff would have exclusive rights of exploitation,” the Court said. Earlier, the court has protected the personality rights of celebrities like Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan, Kumar Sanu, Salman Khan, Karan Johar, Nagarjuna, Kartik Aaryan among others.
