The Delhi High Court on Thursday passed an order protecting the personality rights of actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, observing that the unauthorised use of her personality attributes violates her right to privacy and the right to live with dignity.
A bench of Justice Tejas Karia restrained several entities from using without permission the attributes of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, such as her name and photos.
The court said that the unauthorised use of her personality attributes was hurting her financially and harming her dignity, reputation and goodwill.
The misuse of her name, photo and likeness, among other attributes of her persona, infringes on her rights as it could cause confusion and create a perception of her having endorsed a product, the petition said.
Personality rights of an individual “entail the right to control and protect the exploitation of one’s image, name, likeness or other attributes of the individuals’ personality, in addition to the commercial gains that can be derived from the same”, the court said.
The bench said that it could not turn a blind eye in cases about the unauthorised exploitation of personality rights, and “shall protect the aggrieved parties so as to avert any harm to them resulting from the said unauthorised exploitation”.
The bench passed an interim injunction in favour of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan on her suit filed against several entities that had used her personality attributes allegedly without her permission. The defendants included unknown entities.
The court restrained the defendants from misappropriating her name and its acronym “ARB”, her photo and likeness, or other personal attributes for commercial or personal gain in any format.
The bench ordered American technology company Google to take down within three days the web pages that were identified in the suit.
Google was also directed to submit in a sealed cover the basic subscriber information of the owners, operators or sellers of the products that had allegedly misused the actor’s personality attributes.
It also directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to issue directives to block and disable all such webpages within a week.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s husband Abhishek Bachchan has also moved the High Court seeking protection of his personality rights.
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