New Delhi: Superstars Rajinikanth, Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, and Scarlett Johansson have one thing in common with renowned cardiac surgeon Dr Devi Prasad Shetty: All of them have approached the courts to protect their personality rights.
In a ruling last week, the Delhi High Court recognised and protected Shetty’s personality rights as well as his trademark on Narayana Hrudayalaya—a multi-speciality hospital in Bengaluru.
Previously, Bachchan, Kapoor, and Shroff had been granted relief by the Delhi High Court in a similar case, while Rajinikanth obtained relief from the Madras HC. Across the world, Hollywood star Johansson also approached a New York federal court in May against ChatGPT creator OpenAI over the alleged similarity between her voice and the one used by the company’s new chatbot, Sky.
However, Shetty’s is the first such case where the petitioner has been a doctor.
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Delhi High Court’s ruling
In a bid to protect the personality rights of Shetty, a cardiac surgeon and philanthropist, the Delhi HC temporarily restrained unidentifiable third parties operating certain Facebook pages from misusing, misappropriating, or exploiting the surgeon’s name or aspects of his personality until the next date of hearing in the matter on 15 April 2025.
The single-judge bench of Justice Mini Pushkarna also restrained third parties from infringing on the trademark of Shetty’s Narayana Hrudayalaya, set up in 2000.
By way of its 28 November order, the bench restrained the defendants from “misusing, misappropriating or exploiting the name, likeness, image, photos, videos, or any other aspects” of the doctor’s persona, “which are solely and exclusively associated and identified with him for any commercial and/or personal gain, in any manner whatsoever” without his written authorisation.
Understanding personality rights
An offshoot of the right to privacy, the term ‘personality rights’—also known as the right to publicity—refers to the right to protect, contro, and profit from one’s image, name or likeness.
It entails two fundamental aspects, the first of which is the right to protect one’s image from being commercially exploited without permission, and the second the right to be left alone.
In a ruling in Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf alias Jackie Shroff vs Peppy Store on 15 May this year, a bench of Justice Sanjiv Narula of the Delhi HC had said that one’s “name, voice, image, likeness, mannerisms, gestures, and other uniquely identifiable characteristics” over which one has exclusive control, make up a person’s “personality rights” and “publicity rights”.
Dr Shetty’s plea
In the present case, Shetty had sought permanent restraint on the infringement of his personality and publicity rights as well as his registered trademark through the misappropriation of their goodwill, unfair trade practices, and dilution—essentially the unauthorised use of a trademark by a third party in a way that damages its public perception.
He had approached the Delhi HC seeking action against several known and unknown defendants to restrain them from misusing and exploiting the name, likeness, image, photos, videos or infringing any other personality rights or his registered trademark.
The case was that Shetty has made significant contributions to the field of affordable healthcare and has also received awards for his patented computer-implemented method for facilitating patient-care delivery. Further highlighting that the doctor founded the College of Nursing, Asia Heart Foundation, and Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS), a multi-super-speciality hospital in Kolkata, the plea said that Shetty had become a well-known personality not just in India, but across the world.
He has also appeared in interviews, talk shows, articles and an episode of the Netflix documentary series The Surgeon’s Cut, the plea said, adding that these achievements demonstrate the doctor’s popularity.
His lawyers contended that since he was deeply admired and respected as a leading figure in healthcare, any misuse of his personality rights would have “a deep impact and influence” on the public.
The plea accused the respondents, Medicine Me and Milano Nightlife TV—Facebook pages being operated by unidentifiable third parties—of misusing his name, likeness, photos, and videos. It also claimed that these pages were generating and sharing “fake and misleading” videos on social media and were created with the “sole purpose of deriving illicit commercial gains”.
Accusing the defendants of using, imitating, misappropriating and exploiting Shetty’s personality rights deliberately and without authorisation, the plea added that the public could be misled into using health products or believing the unsubstantiated and unverified health tips that were being promoted and marketed using the doctor’s persona.
The plea also alleged that certain videos were deliberately distorted and doctored to suggest an association between Shetty and the defendants.
A look at past cases
Shetty’s lawyers made a case that his personality rights had been violated, saying that he was a celebrity in his own right and had valid and enforceable personality rights.
His lawyers argued that the unauthorised use of his images, videos and likeness for commercial gain and unjust enrichment caused detriment not just to the doctor but also to the public. However, this is not the first time such a case has come before the courts.
In February 2015, Rajinikanth moved the Madras HC seeking to restrain a production house from using his name, image, caricature, or style of delivering dialogues in a forthcoming film titled Main Hoon Rajinikanth or in any of their projects, in any manner whatsoever as this amounted to the infiltration of his personality rights owing to their unauthorised use.
“It is seen that if any person uses the name of a celebrity without his/her permission, the celebrity is entitled for injunction, if the said celebrity could be easily identified by the use of his name by the others,” the court had said in its order.
Nearly seven years later, in 2022, in Amitabh Bachchan vs Rajat Nagi, the Bollywood superstar moved the Delhi HC for protection of his personality rights, alleging that a jeweller had used Bachchan’s celebrity status to promote their goods and services without authorisation.
Granting relief to the actor, a bench of Justice Navin Chawla passed an interim injunction, saying, “The defendants appear to be using plaintiff’s celebrity status for promoting their own activities, without his authorisation or permission. The plaintiff is, therefore, likely to suffer grave irreparable harm and injury of his reputation.”
Then, last year, the Delhi HC restrained 16 people from using Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor’s name, likeness, and image with the aid of tools like artificial intelligence, face morphing, and GIFs for commercial purposes.
And, in May this year, the Delhi High Court also granted relief to Jackie Shroff by restraining several unidentifiable persons from using the actor’s personality rights by utilising, exploiting or misappropriating his name and other sobriquets including “Jackie”, “Jaggu dada” or even his voice or image, for any commercial purpose without his consent or authorisation.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)