Personality rights protection for actor Kriti Sanon is before the Delhi High Court, where a Friday hearing prompted judges to call for a wider review of the legal framework governing such claims, as comparable petitions continue to mount.
During the hearing, Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav directed advocate Pravin Anand — retained by Sanon — to compile a thorough dossier covering case law and research on personality rights, encompassing both the scope of legal protection afforded under that doctrine and the extent of the High Court's Intellectual Property Division authority to hear such matters.
The judge remarked that matters of this kind were appearing before the court with growing regularity, and that the underlying legal questions called for a broader inquiry than the immediate case alone could accommodate. The bench pressed Anand to lay out how personality rights operate in law — covering which individual attributes qualify for protection and whether the IPD holds jurisdiction over disputes of that nature.
In submissions put forward by Anand, personality rights were described as potentially covering a person's name, voice, facial appearance, likeness, photographs, and video recordings. He flagged the unauthorised commercial exploitation of an individual's identity — using it without that person's knowledge or approval — as a concern that arises in cases of this kind.
Justice Kaurav directed counsel to bring forward relevant case law and academic materials for the court's consideration. The bench directed parties to submit their positions on personality rights, noting that a broader ruling would follow once all submitted materials had been reviewed.
In proceedings before the court, Anand indicated that the compilation would be lodged before the close of business and put forward the position that no question of jurisdiction arose in relation to Sanon's matter. A follow-up hearing in the case has been scheduled for 29 October.
A growing number of personality rights petitions — lodged by actors, athletes, and other prominent individuals — has brought the Delhi High Court's docket into sharper focus as the context against which these proceedings unfold. At the heart of these disputes typically lie claims that a person's name, image, voice, or other defining personal attributes were drawn upon without permission — most often in a commercial context.
Personality rights petitions involving a range of well-known figures — among them actors Kangana Ranaut, Tabu, and Vijay Deverakonda, cricketers Abhishek Sharma and Yuvraj Singh, politician Shashi Tharoor of the Congress party, and Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan — have come before this court on prior occasions.
Widespread adoption of digital tools and AI-driven technologies has added complexity to the matter, particularly where disputes touch on allegedly unauthorised reproductions in digital form, the impersonation of individuals, synthetic media such as deepfakes, and the commercial exploitation of a public figure's likeness. Such rights, where they exist in law, serve to shield distinct facets of a person's identity from being used without their consent.
Where such conflicts arise, the legal terrain can touch on privacy protections, rights over one's public image, ownership of creative or commercial assets, and how a person's identity is used for financial gain. When weighing protections for a public figure's identity, courts must also account for how those rights interact with other recognised interests — among them freedom of expression, journalistic reporting, artistic endeavour, and comparable lawful purposes.
A body of reference materials assembled at the court's request is positioned to inform its deliberations on two interrelated questions: how far personality rights warrant legal protection, and which judicial venue holds proper authority over such matters.
