The Delhi High Court has given some relief to Anil Kapoor after he moved the court against entities using his persona, name, image, voice, and likeness for commercial gains without his consent.
A lot of people do Anil Kapoor’s mimicry, and many are even really good at it. While the actor has always been fine with people copying his voice and antics for fun and comic effect, but he wasn’t that happy when any organisation used his image, voice, his likeness or any other elements of his persona for monetary benefits without his consent. The actor moved the regarding that matter and he finally received some relief in the matter.
The Delhi High Court has passed an interim order which restrained 16 entities from infringing the personality rights of Anil Kapoor. This isn’t the first time that an actor’s voice or persona has been used by other entities without his/her consent.
As per a report on Indian Express, Justice Prathiba Singh said that in the name of free speech, something cannot be done that crosses a line and results in tarnishing the individual’s personality.
“Using a person’s name, voice, dialogue, and image in an illegal manner that too for commercial purposes cannot be permitted. The celebrity’s right of endorsement could in fact be a major source of livelihood for the celebrity. Any form of misuse or commercial use of a celebrity name, voice, persona, or likeness has been shunned by SC in the seminal judgment called the Auto Shankar case,” the HC said as per the Indian Express report.
The court further added, “The technological tools that are now available make it possible for any unauthorised user to make use of celebrities’ persona, by using such tools including Artificial Intelligence. The celebrity also enjoys the right of privacy and does not wish that his or her image, or voice is portrayed in a dark manner as is being done on porn websites.”
“The creation of ringtone and GIF images for commercial gains is also complete misuse. Under these circumstances court has no doubt in holding that the plaintiff’s (Kapoor) name, likeness, image, and persona deserves to be protected not only for his own sake but also for the sake of his family and friends who would not like to see his image, name and other elements misused especially for such tarnishing and negative use,” Justice Singh further stated.
The High Court further added, “The plaintiff has established a prima facie case for grant of ex parte injunction. The defendants no. 1-16 are restrained from in any manner utilising Anil Kapoor’s name, likeness, image, voice or any other aspect of his persona to create any merchandise, ringtones or any other manner misuse of the plaintiff’s name, likeness and other elements by using technological tools like AI, machine learning, deep fakes, face morphing, GIF etc., in a manner either for monetary gain or otherwise or create any videos, photographs etc, for commercial purposes to result in violation of the plaintiff’s rights.”
The court also heard a plea around the usage of ‘jhakaas’, a common slag, which was popularised by Anil Kapoor in his films. The court didn’t restrict the usage of the term but allegedly restricted the usage of the term in the specific way that Kapoor uses.
Not only this, as per the Indian Express report the court has gone ahead to even restrict the usage of the domain name related to Anil Kapoor. Domain Name Registrars, including GoDaddy, have been mentioned in the lawsuit and they have been asked to immediately block or take down the domains which have Kapoor’s mention like anilkapoor.net, anilkapoor.com, etc.
“The said links will be taken down immediately by all internet service providers. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEiTY), upon receipt of this order, shall issue blocking orders in respect of all these links and any other links which may upload pornographic videos in respect of the plaintiff,” Justice Singh added.
The next hearing on this matter will happen on March 12.