Delhi High Court holds that personality rights are not a single cause of action

On 4 November, Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav of the Delhi High Court passed an ad-interim order in actor Kriti Sanon's suit over misuse of her name, image, likeness and voice, and used it to set out limits on how personality rights claims may be pleaded. The court held that personality rights is a description of several distinct causes of action — the right of publicity, passing off, privacy, defamation, and claims under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Copyright Act, 1957 — each with its own elements, defences and remedies, and that grouping them under one label cannot lower the threshold for any of them. It held that the mere use of a person's identity is not by itself unlawful, and that fame affects the commercial value of an identity and the loss caused by misuse without being a condition of the right. It distinguished the right of publicity, which protects commercial value and can be licensed, from privacy, dignity and reputation, which are personal interests and cannot be assigned. On blanket relief, the court said plaintiffs must specify their claims defendant-wise and content-wise with supporting material, and that all claims cannot be placed under one umbrella.

The interim relief directs defendants to take down identified URLs and restrains them from uploading or generating similar material, including AI-generated content, chatbots or voice models presented as Sanon. Intermediaries must disable access to the listed URLs within the timelines set by the IT Rules, 2021, and authorities are to issue blocking directions for sites hosting pornographic deepfakes. The order expressly does not restrain news, reviews, criticism, commentary, satire, parody, caricature or fan expression falling outside those directions. The findings are prima facie and the matter is listed for 10 December. A coordinate bench is separately considering broader personality rights questions in suits by Janhvi Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi and Aradhya Bachchan, where amici have argued that a standalone personality rights claim with a broad John Doe injunction is unknown to Indian law.

Why it matters for digital humans: India has become the most active jurisdiction for likeness litigation, and the pattern so far has been sweeping John Doe injunctions obtained on a general personality rights theory. This order pushes back on the theory itself, and the practical effect is to make likeness claims more work to bring: a rightsholder has to identify defendants and specific content and pick a legal basis, rather than asserting a bundle. For anyone building or licensing avatars, two parts matter. First, the publicity versus privacy split is the shape consent paperwork should already take — a commercial licence over likeness is assignable, the dignity interest is not, and a release that conflates the two is weaker than it looks. Second, the carve-out for satire, parody, commentary and fan expression is a reminder that a takedown pipeline tuned only to likeness matching will over-remove. The doctrinal question stays open until the coordinate bench rules.