Delhi HC protects Gavaskar's personality rights, orders takedown of objectionable content

New Delhi, Dec 23 (PTI) The Delhi High Court on Tuesday protected the personality rights of former cricketer and commentator Sunil Gavaskar by restraining several websites and online platforms from illegally using his name or images for commercial gain without his consent.

Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora also restrained several defendants from using Gavaskar's personality traits through artificial intelligence and deepfake technology, and ordered that certain obscene content uploaded on the Internet are taken down.

The high court said the URLs of the offensive material, infringing posts, videos and allied contents should be taken down by the websites within 72 hours and in case of failure, the social media intermediaries concerned should remove the content.

The court listed the matter for further hearing on May 22.

Gavaskar, in a statement, said this order "marks an important judicial recognition of a sportsperson's personality and publicity rights in India, particularly in cases of unauthorised attribution, digital dissemination and commercial exploitation across social media and e-commerce platforms".

On December 12, the high court had directed social media intermediaries to act within seven days on Gavaskar's plea seeking protection of his personality rights.

It had asked Gavaskar's counsel to first approach the social media intermediaries with his grievances. The high court directed the social media intermediaries to treat Gavaskar's suit as a complaint under the Information and Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 and take the necessary steps within seven days.

On Tuesday, the court was informed that while some of the content had been removed, others were still there on the Internet.

Gavaskar approached the high court, seeking to prevent the unauthorised use of his name, images, persona and likeness by social media platforms and e-commerce websites, and to protect his personality rights.

The right to publicity, popularly known as personality rights, is the right to protect, control and profit from one's image, name or likeness.

Recently, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, her husband Abhishek Bachchan and her mother-in-law Jaya Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Ajay Devgn and R Madhavan, filmmaker Karan Johar, singer Kumar Sanu, Telugu actor Akkineni Nagarjuna, 'Art of Living' founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary and podcaster Raj Shamani also approached the high court seeking protection of their personality and publicity rights. The court granted them interim relief.

Bollywood actor Salman Khan, Telugu actor NTR Rao Junior and Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan have also approached the Delhi High Court seeking protection of their personality rights. PTI SKV ZMN