The Madras High Court on Monday issued a John Doe injunction to protect the personality rights of actor and Rajya Sabha member Kamal Haasan, restraining unauthorised commercial use of his image, likeness, and other identifiable personal attributes.
The single-judge Bench of Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy expressly clarified that permissible forms of creative expression, including satire and caricature, would remain unaffected.
The litigation arose after the plaintiff brought to the court’s attention multiple instances of morphed images and unauthorised merchandising of his name and likeness.
Senior Advocate Satish Parasaran, representing the actor, contended that such acts caused irreparable harm to his reputation and goodwill, and were executed without consent or endorsement, thereby constituting a prima facie infringement of his personality rights.
The High Court observed that the facts established a strong preliminary case for restraint. Accordingly, it prohibited the respondents from creating, disseminating, or displaying false or manipulated images of the plaintiff across any medium and from selling merchandise bearing his name, image, or other personal attributes without prior authorisation. The order, however, explicitly preserved the scope for non-commercial expression, including caricature and satirical works, consistent with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India.
As a John Doe respondent had been impleaded, the court directed the plaintiff to issue public notice of the order in both English and Tamil newspapers to ensure enforceability against unidentified entities.
The relief was sought under the framework of the actor’s personality and moral rights, invoking constitutional protections under Articles 19 and 21 (right to privacy), as well as statutory safeguards under the Copyright Act, 1957, and principles of common law protecting the distinctiveness of personal attributes. The counsel argued that the misappropriation of Haasan’s identity for commercial gain amounted to passing off, infringement of copyright in relation to his image, and violation of the right to privacy.
The actor emphasised that his career spanning over six decades, across multiple Indian languages including Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada, and Bengali, along with numerous national and state awards, had conferred significant commercial value to his endorsements. His distinctive personality traits—including name, signature, voice, image, and other identifiable characteristics—constitute protectable intellectual property, the unauthorised use of which constitutes actionable infringement.
The court drew attention to instances where third-party websites were not only selling T-shirts and other merchandise bearing the actor’s name and image, but were also digitally manipulating his likeness through artificial intelligence to produce misleading, and in some cases, sexually explicit content. Such acts were deemed to have the potential for irreparable reputational and commercial harm.
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