In the first half of October the Delhi High Court created a new, enforceable property right in a famous person’s face, voice and name, across four cases, in about a week. On 14 October it entered the first final decree. The reason it could be entered so fast is the part that should worry you: nobody showed up to argue the other side.
What was ordered, and when
8 October, Kangana Ranaut. Justice Vikas Mahajan granted an ex parte ad interim injunction in Kangana Ranaut v Meta Platforms Inc. Meta must remove identified content within 72 hours of service and file a compliance affidavit in 14 days. MeitY and the Department of Telecommunications must direct ISPs and telcos to block identified sites in the same 72 hours. MediaNama and ANI both carry it. The Court held her stature “inherently grants her proprietary rights over her personality and associated attributes”, that the harm “may not be compensated in monetary terms”, and that fabricated quotes “cannot be permitted to remain available on social media platforms”. She can notify further URLs without filing afresh. Listed before the Joint Registrar on 4 December and the court on 3 February 2027.
8 October, Vijay Deverakonda. Same judge, same day, 94 URLs in an annexure. Meta, Google and X to take down. Flipkart, Amazon, Meesho and Redbubble to remove listed merchandise within 72 hours. Domain registrars to lock or suspend. MeitY and DoT to order blocking. LiveLaw has it. The interesting half is what the Court refused: it declined ex parte relief on the standalone passing-off claim over the word “Rowdy”, while holding that an AI-generated or morphed image of him carrying that word does infringe his personality rights. A word on its own, no. A word on his face, yes.
14 October, Arjun Kapoor. Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav decreed the suit, CS(COMM) 454/2026, making the interim directions absolute and ordering the decree sheet drawn up, per LiveLawBiz. The material had been used “without the plaintiff’s consent and for commercial exploitation”. And then the sentence that defines this whole month: “No disputed question of fact arises which would necessitate a trial.”
It does not, because nobody appeared to dispute anything.
The judge who stopped
On 16 October the same Justice Kaurav heard Kriti Sanon v BBE Marketing Inc and did not grant an injunction. He asked her counsel, Pravin Anand, for something nobody else had been asked for: “Give me judgments and your understanding regarding personality rights.” He wanted to know what actually falls inside the right before handing one out, and listed the matter for 29 October to read the material first.
Two days after decreeing Arjun Kapoor’s case without a trial, the same judge declined to do the equivalent for Kriti Sanon until somebody showed him the law. That is not inconsistency. That is a judge noticing he is building something.
And just before this window, on 28 September, Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani agreed to hear the Vivek Oberoi, Janhvi Kapoor and Aaradhya Bachchan suits as a batch, specifically to settle principles for the many others pending. That is the most consequential thing in this entire story and it got almost no coverage.
Why we are not simply cheering
We should be clear about where we stand, because we have written three pieces on this. We covered the Bombay High Court order for Samantha Ruth Prabhu. We covered Jr NTR demanding regulation rather than filing. We think deepfake pornography and AI voice cloning are serious harms, that the people suing have been genuinely wronged, and that courts moving in 72 hours rather than 72 weeks is a credit to them.
But look at the procedure. A broad new right over a person’s identity, binding on Meta, Google, X, Amazon, Flipkart, domain registrars and two ministries, has been assembled almost entirely from ex parte and uncontested orders. The defendants are deepfake sites, anonymous sellers and John Doe parties. They do not file replies. They do not brief counsel. They do not appear. So every order records a “strong prima facie case” and every finding goes unchallenged, and after a few weeks of this the propositions start being cited as settled law.
The phrase “inherently grants proprietary rights over her personality and associated attributes” has now appeared in multiple orders. Nobody has argued against it in court. Not one of these judgments has had to deal with the obvious hard questions: where does this right stop, who is famous enough to have one, what happens to parody, criticism, journalism and satire, and what does a platform do when a notice turns out to be about something it should not have removed.
Justice Mahajan’s one line of caution is the whole issue in miniature. A site that is “not primarily an infringing website” may apply to have the injunction modified, on an undertaking. In other words, the order sweeps broadly and the remedy for over-reach is that you hire a lawyer in Delhi and ask nicely.
What is genuinely new
Two things, and both come from Bombay rather than Delhi. Justice Madhav Jamdar’s 1 October order for Samantha Ruth Prabhu reached a chatbot persona on Botify AI, whose operator disabled the character after being served, and a site selling cloned voice clips. And it extends to future material of a similar nature on written notice from her or her representative, with a route back for a platform to object.
That is a standing takedown pipe operated by the plaintiff. Google and Amazon told the court they had no objection to implementing it, which is the most telling fact of the month. The platforms are not fighting this. They would much rather process notices than litigate principles.
Bengaluru Baath Take
Six weeks ago we said the test for an AI story was whether anything in the claim could be checked. These cases pass that test. Real orders, named judges, case numbers, dates, documents.
The new question is different. A property right in identity is being created in a courtroom where only one side ever speaks, and every creative person in this country will eventually live under it. Not just the actors who can afford Pravin Anand. The cartoonist, the fan editor, the impressionist, the mimicry artist on a Kannada comedy show, the YouTube reviewer who uses a still from a trailer.
Justice Kaurav asked the right question on 16 October and Justice Bhambhani is asking it in batch. Somebody now needs to put the opposing case properly, and it will not be the deepfake sites, because they are not coming. On the evidence of this month it may have to be the platforms, who have decided it is cheaper to comply, or the press, which is about to discover that a right broad enough to stop a morphed pornographic video is also broad enough to stop a critical one.
Sources
- MediaNama: Delhi HC on Kangana Ranaut’s personality rights
- ANI: Delhi HC protects Kangana Ranaut’s personality rights
- LiveLaw: Delhi HC protects Vijay Deverakonda’s personality rights
- LiveLawBiz: Delhi HC protects Arjun Kapoor’s personality rights
- LiveLaw: Kriti Sanon personality rights plea
- MediaNama: Bombay HC on Samantha Ruth Prabhu, deepfakes and chatbots
