SpicyIP Tidbit: Kriti-cal Plating: Delhi HC Finally Signals Sorting the Personality Rights Salad Platter

[SpicyIP]

[This post is authored by Dr. Aakanksha Kumar. Aakanksha is an independent researcher and academic. Since 2019, she has designed and taught a self-created elective course across law schools titled Comparative Celebrity Laws: Personality, Publicity and Free Speech.]

On 29 October 2026, Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav passed an ad interim order in Kriti Sanon v. BBE Marketing Inc. & Ors. (CS(COMM) 1132/2026). The plaint was, as the order records, the familiar one: “Personality Rights / Publicity Rights”  pleaded as a single right said to flow from privacy, garnished with moral rights, passing off, dilution and tarnishment, and a prayer for “all other content” to come down. The targets were a mixed bag: a site offering “bookings” for her appearances, accounts posing as her, merchandise, AI chatbots and voice clones, and pornographic deepfakes. At the hearing, relief was confined to publicity and privacy (paras 3, 6 -7, 10).

Regular readers will know I have spent the better part of this year lamenting omnibus prayers, about voices and gestures being called “copyrights of the plaintiff”, about fan pages being taken down on the strength of a follower count, and about “personality rights” being served as one muddled dish rather than the salad platter of distinct claims it actually is (see here, here and here). So it is only fair that I say so, when a court gets it right. What Justice Kaurav has done in this order is the kind of sorting this author has long hoped for.

What’s great

• Nature of relief – interim only (paras 8, 9, 17, 29, 34) – The order insulates itself at every turn: an “ad interim arrangement, simpliciter” (para 8, citing Wander v. Antox); the reason being that questions suggest uncertainty “of law as much as of fact” (para 9); “only a prima facie understanding” (para 17); relief “until the next date of hearing” (para 29); observations “only for this interim arrangement” (para 34). No excessive merits-style observations at the interim stage, i.e. nothing that can be treated in practise as precedent, and yet the Court’s direction is clear.
• Exceptions noted at Para 33 – Nothing restrains “news, review, criticism, commentary, satire, parody, caricature or fan expression”. Fan expression is finally named in an operative carve-out. After the fan page and merchandising restraint in Khushi Kapoor, and Allu Arjun (in Allu Arjun, fan merchandise was clubbed alongside the same restraint as on voice clones and morphed videos, while in Khushi Kapoor, a Facebook fan page with a misspelt bio and no posts since 2023 was injuncted because of a large follower count), this is a most welcome clarification.

• “Personality rights” is “not a single cause of action” but several distinct claims. (Paras 17 -18)
• Nature of the right – right of publicity is not a fundamental right (para 20)
• Personal interests sit apart from licensable publicity; publicity is neither privacy nor passing off; and one label cannot lower any claim’s threshold. (Paras 19 – 21)
• Defendants to be segregated by type of conduct and nature of harm – Plead defendant-wise and content-wise; no omnibus injunctions; and intermediaries are “parties for compliance, not wrongdoers”. (Paras 23-24)

What’s good

• D.M. Entertainment’s parody carve-out restated; publicity is “commercial and licensable” (Titan); Puttaswamy does not make it a fundamental right (Digital Collectibles); and the rights belong “to one and all” (Krishna Kishore Singh). (Paras 13-16. )
• Fame goes to value and loss, not entitlement; mere use of identity is not, by itself, unlawful. (Para 22)
• IT Rules first (Ajay Devgn), read with the 2026 amendment, which brings deepfakes within the Rules (three hours on a court order, two on a complaint), and the Court endorses Ajay Devgn‘s suggestion that a plaintiff who skips this route may be sent back “to first avail its remedy under the aforesaid Rules”. Plaintiff, having written to the platforms first, is not faulted. (Paras 25-26)

What nonetheless seems like an oversight

Privacy, dignity and reputation are said to “end with the person”. Privacy, yes. Reputation is trickier: in Babuji Rawji Shah v. S. Hussain Zaidi (2022), the Supreme Court read Section 306 of the Indian Succession Act as limiting only the survival of a damages claim, not an injunction sought by family or near relatives (para 19); drew on Explanation 1 to  (then) Section 499 IPC to hold that “a right in tort may arise” where an imputation would harm the deceased’s reputation if living, or is meant to hurt the family’s feelings; and set three elements: kinship, falsity, and lowering of the deceased’s character and reputation (I discuss this potential reading of the decision at Chapter 6 of my PhD thesis). Arguably, then, it is a two-stage burden: first, prove the elements for the deceased; then prove that the same imputation defames the relatives who brought the action. Either way, reputation, unlike privacy, can be arguably asserted post mortem, but only as defamation, thresholds for which remain intact, and never as a back door for an estate’s “personality right”.

What to look forward to

A clear answer to whether merchandise where “the image is itself the product” (something I discuss on the blog here) is misappropriation, especially when the images are from the plaintiff’s personal life, is still awaited. (Para 28) What will be interesting to see further is whether the court chooses to go ahead with the misappropriation simpliciter standard, or whether the court uses the misrepresentation-passing off yardstick.

With respect, Justice Kaurav has said just enough. Until 10 December, I am glad to keep aside some of my earlier pessimism, finally.

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