In the first half of October 2026, the Delhi High Court heard a steady stream of personality rights cases brought by actors and other public figures, many of them aimed at AI-generated deepfakes, fake endorsements, and online merchandise. Then, on October 15 and 16, the judge hearing two of those suits stopped to ask a more basic question: what exactly is this right, and where does it end?
Nothing has been decided yet. But the questions the court has put on the table matter for anyone who builds a brand around a face, a voice, or a name, and for anyone who makes content, merchandise, or platforms that touch them.
A right built by judges, one case at a time
India has no dedicated statute on personality rights. The protection has grown out of court decisions, drawing on passing off, privacy, and, more recently, the idea of a publicity right. In September 2023, the Delhi High Court restrained various entities from using actor Anil Kapoor’s name, image, and voice for commercial purposes without his consent, including through AI and deepfakes, and directed domain registrars to suspend websites using his name. In 2024, the Bombay High Court cited that order when protecting singer Arijit Singh’s personality attributes, and noted that the Delhi order had itself relied on the Supreme Court’s earlier privacy ruling in R. Rajagopal.
Since then, the volume has grown sharply. The October reports alone cover suits or orders involving actors, a doctor whose name was used in fake medical videos, and a coaching-institute founder targeted by deepfake endorsements, with the courts frequently issuing takedown directions against social media and web platforms.
What happened on October 15 and 16
On October 15, Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav was hearing actor Rakesh Bedi’s suit, which concerns online merchandise and caricatures. The court observed that personality rights and publicity rights are increasingly claimed together, and that some claims now stretch to defamation, caricatures, and independent creative works. “Therefore, we have to draw some line,” it said, and asked the lawyers for compilations of judgments and written submissions. It identified three questions: what personality rights protect, what constitutes publicity rights, and who can claim them.
The next day, the same judge heard actor Kriti Sanon’s new suit and began by asking her counsel to explain what personality rights protect. The court asked for a “comprehensive and holistic” compilation of judgments and material, said counsel could rely on notes already filed in other pending cases, passed the matter over, and said it would pass a comprehensive order after considering what is placed before it.
The argument on the table
In the Bedi hearing, counsel for Meta, appearing as an intermediary, argued that personality rights and publicity rights rest on different legal foundations. As reported, the submission was that publicity rights are rooted in property law, can be assigned to others, and are protected under Article 300A of the Constitution, while privacy is a personal fundamental right recognised in the Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy judgment and cannot be transferred. On that view, claims arising from commercial use should be examined under passing off or property law, claims based on privacy under privacy law, and claims about reputation under defamation law. Counsel also argued that injunctions should not be granted where a larger public interest is involved, and suggested that caricatures may fall outside these rights altogether.
It is important to read this as one party’s submission. The court has not accepted or rejected it, and the plaintiff’s position on these points was not reported. But the structure is useful because it shows how much turns on the classification. A right treated as property is something that can be licensed and assigned. A right treated as privacy is personal and stays with the individual.
Signals from other benches
Other recent orders suggest courts are already calibrating relief to the harm shown. In one actor’s suit, a judge of the same court declined a blanket injunction covering roughly 6,884 URLs, confined interim relief to obscene content, and has since appointed advocate Gautam Bhatia as amicus curiae. In another actor’s suit, relief was limited to sexually explicit content, and the court asked for proof that anyone was actually making money from her image. Another bench has also decided to hear several suits together because they raise common questions about the scope of the right.
Why this matters beyond celebrities
For creators and publishers, the open question is where caricature, parody, and fan content sit. For businesses that sign endorsement and licensing deals, whether a publicity right is assignable is not a theoretical point: it affects what a contract can transfer, and who can sue. For platforms, the scope of takedown orders depends on what exactly is being protected. And for practitioners, the direction of the court’s questions points toward more specific pleadings, naming the attributes at issue, the uses complained of, and the evidence of commercial exploitation.
The court has said a comprehensive order will follow. Until it does, the safest reading is that India’s personality rights law is moving from case-by-case protection toward an attempt to define its own boundaries, and that the definitions chosen will shape how the right is used for years.
Sources consulted for this piece: LiveLawBiz reports of October 15 and October 16, 2026 on the Rakesh Bedi and Kriti Sanon hearings (Riya Rathore); LiveLaw and LawChakra reports on the filing of Rakesh Bedi’s suit (September 2026); Gulf News on the Delhi High Court’s 2023 Anil Kapoor order; Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression database entry on Singh v. Codible Ventures (Bombay High Court); and LiveLawBiz’s personality rights coverage for the other October orders. This piece was independently researched and written; no text has been reproduced from any source beyond the two short quoted phrases above. The proceedings are ongoing and no final order has been passed, so the position may change.
