A petition lodged by Kriti Sanon before the Delhi High Court over the protection of her personality rights drew a response from the bench on Friday, with judges indicating that the matter warranted a wider look at the legal framework underpinning such claims, given the growing number of comparable filings before the courts.
During the hearing, advocate Pravin Anand — retained by Sanon — received a direction from Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav to put together a thorough dossier covering relevant rulings and research on personality rights, spanning both the scope of available protections and the authority of the High Court's Intellectual Property Division to hear such matters. Noting that such applications were coming before the bench with growing regularity, the judge indicated that the underlying legal questions called for a broader inquiry than the immediate dispute could accommodate.
Judges at the bench directed Anand to lay out how personality rights operate in law — covering which personal attributes qualify for protection and whether the intellectual property division holds jurisdiction over such matters. In the course of those proceedings, Anand put forward the position that personality rights are capable of covering a range of identifying attributes — among them a person's name, voice, face, image, photographs, and videos. Using someone's identity for commercial gain without that person's knowledge or approval was another matter he flagged as a concern in these types of cases.
Justice Kaurav, looking to ground the discussion in established law, directed counsel to bring forward relevant case precedents and academic research for the court's consideration. The bench called on parties to furnish their arguments and analysis on personality rights, noting that a detailed ruling would follow once all submitted materials had been reviewed.
Counsel Anand advised the court that the relevant compilation would be lodged before the close of business, adding that no question of jurisdiction arose in connection with Sanon's matter. A follow-up hearing in the case has been scheduled for 29 October.
A growing queue of personality rights petitions — lodged by actors, athletes, and other prominent individuals — has been building before the Delhi High Court, forming the broader context in which these proceedings sit. At the heart of such disputes typically lie claims that a person's name, image, recorded voice, or other defining personal attributes were put to commercial use without their consent.
Personality rights petitions filed by a range of well-known figures — among them film performers Kangana Ranaut, Tabu, and Vijay Deverakonda, cricketers Abhishek Sharma and Yuvraj Singh, the politician Shashi Tharoor of the Congress party, and Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan — have come before this court on earlier occasions.
Widespread adoption of digital tools and AI-driven technologies has added fresh layers of complexity to the matter, especially 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. Under most legal frameworks, the concept of personality rights functions as a shield against the unauthorised commercial or personal use of someone's identifying characteristics.
These conflicts can touch on a range of overlapping legal territories — from how personal data and identity are handled commercially, to who holds rights over how someone's name or likeness gets used. When weighing protections of this kind, courts must also account for how they interact with countervailing interests — among them freedom of expression, journalistic activity, artistic endeavour, and other recognised uses of a public figure's name or likeness.
A legal compilation requested by the court is anticipated to inform its examination of those questions, among them how far personality rights protections extend and which venue holds authority to hear such disputes.
