After a month of Indian courts granting sweeping personality rights orders to famous plaintiffs against defendants who never showed up, one court did something different. It refused a stay, and then asked to watch the film.
Sourav Ganguly and Luv Films LLP sued over Doosra, directed by Abhinay Deo, which was due in theatres on 23 October. On 22 October the Delhi High Court declined to stop it. The judge’s words, as reported by MediaNama: “I am simply keeping it for tomorrow. No stay.”
The next day, per Bar and Bench, the Court asked the producers to arrange a screening for it, issued summons to the directors and producers, directed replies to the injunction application, and refused an oral request to stop the OTT release. Watching the film, the Court said, “would be important to understand whether Ganguly’s personality rights have been violated”, and the injunction application “will be decided after considering the defendants’ response”.
So the film released, the defendants have to answer, and a judge is going to sit down and look at the work before ruling on it. That should be unremarkable. This month it is close to unprecedented.
Why this case is different
In the Delhi personality rights orders of early October, the defendants were deepfake sites, anonymous merchandise sellers and John Doe parties. They filed nothing, appeared nowhere, and the orders went out in 72-hour compliance windows against Meta, Google, Amazon and two ministries. We wrote about that pattern on 14 October.
Here the defendants are a production house, named filmmakers and PVR. They have counsel. They have a case, and they are making it: that Doosra is not a biopic, that it follows a girl from Rajasthan who is inspired by Ganguly, and that there is a difference between a film about a person and a film about what a person meant to someone.
The plaintiffs say the film exploits his identity and achievements without consent, and that roughly one-third of the trailer is footage of Ganguly himself.
Both of those can be substantially true at once, which is exactly why a court should have to watch it. Is this a film trading on a man’s life without permission, or a film about fandom that uses archival sporting footage? No affidavit answers that. Only the film does.
The commercial motive, stated plainly
There is a part of this claim that is not about dignity at all and it deserves naming. Luv Films is developing an authorised Ganguly biopic, and part of the pleaded harm is that Doosra could affect it.
That reframes the case. It is not only a celebrity objecting to misuse of his image. It is the holder of an official life-story licence objecting to an unofficial film in the same territory. Those are both legitimate interests, but they are different, and the second one is competition law wearing personality rights clothing.
It also exposes the hole in the right everyone has been building this month. If a sanctioned biopic can block an unsanctioned film about the same subject, then exclusive life-story deals become exclusive rights over a public figure’s history, and Indian cinema loses the ability to make unauthorised films about powerful people. Which is most of the films about powerful people worth making.
A caution on the bench
We cannot tell you with confidence which judge did what. MediaNama names Justice Dinesh Bhatt for the 22 October refusal. Bar and Bench names Justice Vinod Kumar for the 23 October screening order while separately referring to a 22 October order refusing the stay. A weekly IP digest attributes the matter to Justice Dinesh Bhatt. There is no case number in any of the reporting.
We are flagging it rather than picking the version we like. If you see a confident single name attached to this case somewhere else, it may be right, but nobody has shown their work.
Bengaluru Baath Take
This is the first order of the month that treats a personality rights claim as a question rather than a formality, and it only happened because somebody turned up to disagree.
That is the whole lesson of October. Four actors got broad orders in a week because the people on the other side were anonymous criminals. A cricketer with an impeccable case got no stay at all, because the people on the other side were a real production house with a real argument and a lawyer in the room. The strength of the right, it turns out, has very little to do with the plaintiff and almost everything to do with whether anyone contests it.
We are glad this judge wants to watch the film. Somebody should also ask what it means that a film could have been stopped on the strength of a trailer, and what any of us would be allowed to make about a public figure if the answer in a future case is yes.
The screening is the thing to watch. Not the order.
