Delhi High Court Protects Arjun Kapoor's Personality Rights Against AI Deepfakes, Unauthorised Merchandise

The Court has also directed the government's IT and telecom departments to take down specified infringing online links and allowed Kapoor to approach Meta and Google over subsequently discovered material.

Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, in an October 14 judgment, observed that the material placed before the Court was being used “without the plaintiff's consent and for commercial exploitation”.

The suit concerned the alleged unauthorised use of Kapoor's persona across online platforms and commercial products, including T-shirts, sweatshirts, stickers, posters, mugs and mousepads.

The interim directions, initially issued on April 29, also covered the use or exploitation of his performances through technologies such as artificial intelligence, generative AI, machine learning, deepfakes, face morphing and superimposition.

The Court's final directions require Defendants 17 and 18 — the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications — to take down specified infringing links, including links attributable to defendant Ice Poster that continued to remain active.

The interim directions were made absolute in respect of several other defendants, including online sellers and entities associated with the alleged infringing material.

The judgment also provides a mechanism for addressing further instances of alleged misuse.

Kapoor may approach Meta Platforms and Google with details of subsequently discovered URLs or content relating to the dispute, along with supporting particulars and documents on affidavit.

The platforms must independently examine the requests and act in accordance with their respective policies. If they do not act on a request, Kapoor may return to the Court seeking appropriate directions.

Explaining why the matter did not require a full trial, the Court noted that none of the defendants had controverted the factual averments in the plaint.

In the absence of written statements or affidavits of admission and denial of documents, the pleadings and documents were liable to be treated as admitted under Rule 3 of Chapter VII of the Delhi High Court (Original Side) Rules, 2018.

The Court accordingly held: “No disputed question of fact arises which would necessitate a trial.”

The plaintiff's counsel had submitted that, following compliance with the interim directions by certain parties, there was no likelihood of the defendants being permitted to continue infringing Kapoor's personality rights and that the suit might not warrant a full-fledged trial.

Counsel also submitted that other intermediaries and social media platforms were unlikely to object to complying with the Court's directions.

The Court ultimately decreed the suit, directed that the decree sheet be drawn up and disposed of the pending applications.

For Arjun Kapoor: Advocate Pravin Anand with Dhruv Anand, Dhananjay Khanna and Bhavya Verma

For Defendants: Advocate Jayesh Kalebere for D1; Advocate Aditya Gupta with Rohith Venkatesan & Angela Arora for D12; Advocate Varun Pathak with Vidshesh Sharma & Ananya Gogoi for D16; CGSC Satya Ranjan Swain with Advocate Naveen for D17 & 18.