Delhi High Court Corrects Error In Acharya Balkrishna's Personality Rights Order, Removes Bar On Meta, Google

The Delhi High Court on Friday corrected a procedural oversight in the personality rights suit filed by Patanjali's Acharya Balkrishna, clarifying that a restraint on content creation had been inadvertently extended to digital intermediaries, including Meta and Google

Justice Tushar Rao Gedela noted that directions in the Court's March 24 order, which were intended primarily for the main content creators, had mistakenly been applied to all defendants, including intermediaries.

The earlier order had restrained Defendants 1 to 10 from “creating, publishing, uploading, sharing, or disseminating” infringing videos and related content.

Counsel for Google and Meta argued that the direction wrongly treated them on par with content creators, even though they do not originate such material.

Accepting this contention, the Court observed, “It appears that inadvertently the direction…has also taken within its ambit defendant number 4,” adding that the error arose “on account of oversight and inadvertence.”

The court further clarified, “Question is, they are not the ones who are creating content. None other than defendant number 1 and maybe others we don't know.”

Accordingly, Justice Gedela ordered that paragraph 40A of the earlier order be corrected to apply only to Defendant No. 1, the primary content creator, and directed that references to Meta and Google be deleted from that restraint.

At the same time, the court made it clear that the modification “has got nothing to do with the takedown brief,” indicating that the existing directions requiring intermediaries to remove or disable access to infringing content will continue to operate.

For search engines such as Google, the Court noted that their role would be limited to measures such as de-indexing infringing URLs once identified.

The Court also granted liberty to the plaintiff to file appropriate applications placing additional infringing content on record, which may then be considered for further takedown directions.