Personality Rights Cannot Extinguish Parody, Caricature Or Lampooning: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court on 5 August held that personality rights cannot be used to extinguish entire genres of expression such as caricature, lampooning or parody, while granting PhysicsWallah founder and physics educator Alakh Pandey interim protection against three specific forms of misuse of his persona.

Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani was hearing a commercial suit filed by Pandey against social media accounts, sticker platforms, coupon websites and domain registrars accused of misusing his name, image, voice and likeness online. He observed that the concept of personality rights, as claimed in the matter, "may be over broad and therefore susceptible to misapplication."

Pandey's suit sought a wide injunction against unauthorised use of his persona in stickers, memes, videos and websites, along with directions to disclose the identities of the persons behind the allegedly infringing accounts.

Senior Advocate J. Sai Deepak, appearing for Pandey, handed up a categorised list of URLs containing material alleged to be sexually vulgar, commercially exploitative or impersonating the plaintiff.

Relying on the Coordinate Bench's decision in DM Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House and Others, the Court said it "would want to examine and ensure that personality rights are not deployed to prevent dissemination of information in relation to wrongdoing; or to extinguish an entire genre of expression including caricature, lampooning or parody which may not amount to commercial exploitation of an individual's personality or publicity rights."

Following this, the Court restricted interim protection to three categories of violations: sexually vulgar portrayal of Pandey, unauthorised monetisation of his persona and impersonation. It held that Pandey had made out a prima facie case "limited only" to these categories, that the balance of convenience favoured him and that he would suffer irreparable loss without interim protection.

Accordingly, the High Court passed an ex-parte ad-interim injunction restraining the identified defendants from using Pandey's persona in these three ways. It also directed the platforms hosting the content to take it down and disclose the identity, address, contact details and payment details of the persons operating the accounts.

It permitted Pandey to approach intermediaries with supporting material if he discovers mirror or redirect websites during the pendency of the suit, subject to filing an impleadment application. It warned that any false or non-bona fide assertion "would invite appropriate orders from the court."

The matter is listed before the Joint Registrar on 6 November 2026 for completion of pleadings.