Amitabh Bachchan Wins Personality Rights Case, Delhi HC Passes Final Decree

Mumbai: The Delhi High Court has passed a final order in favour of actor Amitabh Bachchan, protecting his personality rights and restraining several entities and unidentified persons from using his name, image, voice or likeness for commercial purposes without his permission.

Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav decreed Bachchan’s suit concerning the alleged unauthorised commercial misuse of his personality rights, bringing to an end proceedings that had continued since the Court first granted an ex-parte ad-interim injunction in November 2022.

The Court held that the right to control the commercial use of a human identity constitutes the “right to publicity” and found that Bachchan’s name and photographs had been used for commercial gain without his consent in a manner that falsely suggested his endorsement.

The suit was filed over alleged misuse of Bachchan’s persona through a range of platforms and products, including a mobile application titled “Amitabh Bachchan Video Call”, messages promoting a purported “Kaun Banega Crorepati” lottery, a general knowledge quiz book carrying his photograph, T-shirts, posters and domain names incorporating his identity.

The Court noted that the unauthorised uses involved Bachchan’s “very name and photographs” and that the essential requirements for protection of publicity rights an enforceable right in the identity and identifiability of the celebrity stood satisfied in the case.

Significantly, the High Court also allowed the decree to operate against unidentified defendants, or John Does, taking note of what it described as a continuing pattern of anonymous misuse of Bachchan’s persona through websites, applications, posters and messaging platforms.

The Court said that such anonymous infringers could not always be tracked to identified persons and, therefore, the protection granted in the decree would also extend against them. Bachchan was further granted liberty to institute fresh proceedings if a fresh cause of action arose from any future unauthorised misuse.

Four of the defendants Rajat Nagi, Manoj Publications, Tamatina and Mahesh Patel settled the matter with Bachchan and acknowledged his publicity and privacy rights.

Under the settlement, one defendant agreed to delete the “Amitabh Bachchan Video Call” application, while another discontinued publication of a general knowledge quiz book carrying the actor’s image. Another defendant stopped selling posters featuring his name, image and likeness, while the registrant of the domain name amitabhbachchan.in stated that the domain had been deleted.

The settling defendants undertook not to use Bachchan’s name, image, voice, likeness or any other aspect of his persona in the future without his express permission.

The Court found the settlement to be lawful and voluntary and decreed the suit against those defendants in terms of the compromise.

As regards the remaining defendants, the Court noted that despite service, they neither appeared nor filed written statements. Their right to file written statements had already been closed.

While observing that a judgment under Order VIII Rule 10 of the Civil Procedure Code should not be passed mechanically merely because a defendant has failed to file a defence, the Court held that no disputed question of fact requiring a trial arose in the present case.

It said that requiring Bachchan to lead ex-parte evidence would merely result in repetition of the allegations already made in the plaint and that the case was fit for a summary judgment.

The Court accordingly decreed the suit against the remaining defendants and held that the ex-parte ad-interim injunction granted in November 2022 stood merged with the final decree.

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