New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has granted an ad-interim injunction in favour of actor and Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, restraining multiple online marketplaces, AI platforms, websites and unidentified entities from misusing his name, image, voice, likeness and other attributes of his personality for commercial gain.
A single-judge Bench of Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora passed the ex parte order in a suit filed by Kalyan seeking protection of his personality and publicity rights against unauthorised merchandise, impersonation, AI-generated content, deepfakes, and misleading online listings.
In its order, the Delhi HC noted that Kalyan, a prominent public figure with a distinguished career in Telugu cinema and public life, has acquired substantial commercial brand value associated with his name, image, voice and persona over nearly three decades.
The court observed that Kalyan’s celebrity status inherently grants him proprietary rights over his personality attributes.
According to the plea, several entities were exploiting Kalyan’s persona without consent by selling merchandise such as T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, posters and stickers, running misleading event listings, hosting impersonation pages on social media, and enabling AI tools to generate synthetic voice, images and conversational outputs in his name.
The Delhi High Court observed that the unauthorised use of the plaintiff’s attributes amounted to a violation of his personality rights and that continued availability of such content would cause irreparable injury.
“The balance of convenience lies in favour of the plaintiff, and the continuing availability of the infringing content would cause irreparable injury to the plaintiff,” Justice Arora said while granting interim protection. The Delhi HC restrained identified infringing defendants as well as John Doe entities from directly or indirectly using or exploiting Kalyan’s name, image, likeness or voice for any commercial purpose, including through artificial intelligence, generative AI or deepfakes, without his consent.
It also directed e-commerce platforms, including Flipkart, Amazon and Meesho, to delist infringing products and disclose KYC details of sellers to the plaintiff.
Websites found misusing Kalyan’s identity for events or merchandise were ordered to take down offending links within a week.
It further restrained AI platforms from facilitating or enabling the creation of AI-generated content that infringes on Kalyan’s personality rights.
On social media, Justice Arora drew a distinction between impersonation and long-standing fan pages. It allowed certain Instagram fan accounts to remain active, subject to a clear disclaimer stating that they are fan pages, failing which the accounts would be made inactive.
The judge further directed Google and Meta to provide Basic Subscriber Information and IP login details of the remaining infringing URLs to enable identification of anonymous violators.
The matter has been listed before the Joint Registrar on February 9 for completion of pleadings, and will return to the Bench on May 12, 2026.
(IANS)
