The Delhi High Court has been seeing what can be termed an almost unending spate of personality rights filings, but there’s now a fork in the road that recent orders over the past month are recognising. In this three-part post, Dr. Aakanksha Kumar argues that “personality rights” in India is not a single cause of action but a salad platter of analytically distinct claims, and reads the August 2026 orders as the first sign that the platter is finally being plated: claims asked to be segregated, grants shrunk, and free-speech uses carved out. Aakanksha (She/Her) is an independent researcher and academic who also consults with content creators and advises Chhattisgarhi music artists on copyright-related matters. Previously, she served as Associate Professor, Associate Dean, and Associate Director of the Centre for Post Graduate Legal Studies (CPGLS) at Jindal Global Law School (JGLS). Since 2019, she has designed and taught a self-created elective course across law schools titled Comparative Celebrity Laws: Personality, Publicity and Free Speech – currently being administered at NLSIU, Bengaluru.
[Part I] The Road Not Taken (Down): Delhi HC Starts Sorting the Personality Rights “Salad Platter”
By Dr. Aakanksha Kumar
I have spent a good part of this year prophesying [as Bob Dylan called for in his 1964 song] and mourning something that ought to exist and does not: in this instance a coherent doctrine, which we have had every material for and had somehow declined to assemble. In January I lamented mistakes in the Vikas Pahwa matter. In April I wrote, twice on this blog [here and here], that the court was watering the wrong rights. Then came the first two weeks in August, and the wheel is still spinning. Between 4 and 13 August 2026, the Delhi High Court (DHC) passed five interim orders in personality rights suits. Four were by Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani in the matters filed by Alakh Pandey (4 August 2026 and 5 August 2026), Janhvi Kapoor (11 August 2026) and the older matter filed by Aaradhya Bachchan (CS(COMM) 230/2023), listed for fresh hearings (13 August 2026). One was by Justice Jyoti Singh in the Khushi Kapoor (12 August 2026) matter. My thesis has been that “personality rights” in India isn’t really a cause of action. It’s a salad platter of (at least) six analytically distinct claims. And so, with the recent spate of favourable orders for celebrity plaintiffs, everything that should be precise has arguably gone muddled: What interest is being protected? What’s the harm? Should the “nature” of the defendant’s “unauthorised use”, influence a determination on harm? What’s the remedy? Should all types of unauthorised “taking” be treated as violations simpliciter, or is there a carve-out for “fair” unauthorised taking? – I still stand by that as a diagnosis; however, I now must admit that the prognosis isn’t looking too bad. These aforementioned orders are the first real sign that a change is in the offing – and the salad platter is being plated.
In this three-part post, I first map the template prayer(s) noticeable in most celebrity personality rights cases, and the orders that have started to disaggregate them. I then unwrap the structural reasons for the concentration of this litigation in Delhi and the three questions Aaradhya Bachchan poses to it, before turning in Part III to fan pages, fan merchandise, and the free-speech case for treating unauthorised use as something short of actionable use.
Maximalism in Claims: Different Facts but Same, Overbroad Prayer
There’s a noticeable “template/standard” in most celebrity-personality rights claims of late – a striking convergence of sorts in these matters at the pleadings stage. Whatever the facts, the prayer is the same.
Alakh Pandey’s prayer (a) sought to restrain every aspect of persona on every medium and technology, including indexing and facilitating access, and, prayer (b) then repeats the same restraint under different labels of wrongs identified [Order of 5 August 2026 at para 8] – Read together, it is possible that the same cause of action may very well give rise to different rights to be claimed, unfortunately, it is the structure of the pleadings that contribute to the doctrinal collapse with forgetting (choosing not to?) to segregate distinct claims – distinct elements to prove at the end of the plaintiff. The claim then seeks to extend protection to “any attributes… identifiable with” the plaintiff and treats unauthorised use as sufficient to trigger liability simpliciter.
While the Janhvi Kapoor order does not reproduce the prayer clauses, we find that the maximalism was quantitative as well, where relief was claimed against 6,884 URLs. The Khushi Kapoor order similarly doesn’t reproduce the prayers; however, Para 41 records counsel restricting relief, on instructions, to ~170 URLs across five ranges, without prejudice to the rest. Why the count is lesser, might be worth a (calculated) guess. Both matters were listed on 11 August 2026, same counsel, different judges. Bhambhani, J spent a long hearing in the Janhvi Kapoor matter, refused a blanket order over 6884 URLs, and asked counsel to tabulate. In Khushi Kapoor the same day, passover was sought and nobody appeared on the second call. The next morning, they came back and pressed ~170 URLs. Maybe a lesson in “volume” was incorporated?
In Aaradhya Bachchan, the plaintiffs argued that a family name carries a reputation akin to a trademark. That is the claim that produced the order’s three questions, which I’ll briefly discuss below.
Claims Asked to be Narrowed, Grants Shrunk, but Not Everything is “Personality Rights” Violation
A day prior to the main reported order in Alakh Pandey, on 4 August, Justice Bhambhani heard I.A. 20740/2026 and directed the plaintiff to tabulate the alleged infractions by specific defendant into two categories: first, commercial/monetised use of the plaintiff’s personality rights. Second, “content that is sexually vulgar and in excess of satire, caricature, lampooning and parody”. Furthermore, Justice Bhambhani listed libellous and slanderous content among the things falling outside the category, and said such content may enjoy protection under the free-speech regime or be amenable to action outside the personality rights regime under intellectual property law. This is a welcome change, as reputational harm to persona doesn’t fall within established categories of intellectual property claims (whether statutory or tort).
This effectively recognises the exceptions enunciated by a single-judge bench of the DHC at para 14 in D.M. Entertainment [that we discussed on the blog here]; which the judge cited in his order on 5 August, granting an injunction limited to three violations (para 16): sexually vulgar portrayal, monetising the personality for gain without a licence, and impersonation. The Court further cautioned that personality rights should not be applied so broadly as to suppress information about wrongdoing or protected forms of expression such as caricature, lampooning, and parody. Thereafter, in Janhvi Kapoor, no blanket order was issued over the 6,884 URLs; and Counsel was instead directed (at para 29) to tabulate them into three categories again: content that is ex facie pornographic and sexually vulgar, content that ex facie directly monetises the plaintiff’s personality rights, and content using her name and likeness to indirectly promote the sale of merchandise and services. Relief followed for content that was ex facie grossly sexually vulgar or pornographic. That is 552 URLs out of 6,884, or roughly eight per cent. Categories two and three were deferred to a later date. In my opinion, those two deferred categories deserve separating out. Direct monetisation of a persona raises a right of publicity (commercial misappropriation) question. Using a name and likeness to promote goods additionally raises a source-identification question (misrepresentation – persona passing off) (For a deeper dive, see my PhD and this Let’s Ipsa Loquitor episode here). The two enquiries demand different evidence, and (thankfully so!) the split appears in the order without anyone having had to argue for it.
Two days after that, in Aradhya Bachchan, nothing was granted at all. Instead, Justice Bhambhani framed three questions (para 2) thus –
- Can a family name itself acquire reputation and qualify as intellectual property, and if so, what protection does it receive?
- Does fake news about a person violate any intellectual property right, and if so, which one?
- Can defamation or other injury to reputation be treated as a violation of intellectual property rights?
The Khushi Kapoor order though, maintains the overbroad grant style of earlier similar matters. It (unfortunately) grants a wider remedy in its nature, albeit after counsel themselves gave a restricted list. The Court granted a single omnibus restraint against defendants from exploiting the name “Khushi Kapoor”, her image, likeness and persona, including through AI generated content and also directed the relevant authorities and Living Media to take down specified URLs within 36 hours. This order also notes earlier orders of co-ordinate benches of the DHC that were relied on: DM Entertainment, Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India and Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf v. Peppy Store [discussed on the blog here and here] in reaching these conclusions that cast a very wide net on what gets caught as “personality rights” violations.
Part I closes here with the DHC pulling in two directions at once – narrowing in one set of orders, casting the net wide in another. Part II shall discuss the DHC’s contribution to this architecture of overbroad claims and grants, and the three questions Aaradhya Bachchan asks about how far personality rights can stretch.
