Personality Rights Can't Extinguish Caricature, Lampooning Or Parody Unless Commercial Exploitation Is Involved: Delhi High Court
The Delhi High Court has cautioned that the concept of personality rights cannot be deployed in an overbroad manner to prevent dissemination of information concerning wrongdoing or to extinguish forms of expression such as caricature, lampooning and parody, particularly where such expression does not amount to commercial exploitation of an individual's personality or publicity rights. [2026 LiveLaw (Del) 736]
Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani made the observation while dealing with a suit filed by educator and Physics Wallah founder Alakh Pandey alleging infringement of his personality and publicity rights by various online platforms.
The Court observed that the concept of personality rights, as claimed in the matter, “may be over broad and therefore susceptible to misapplication.”
Referring to an earlier decision of a coordinate bench in DM Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House & Ors., the Court said:
“…. this court would want to examine and ensure that personality rights are not deployed to prevent dissemination of information in relation to wrongdoing; or to extinguish an entire genre of expression including caricature, lampooning or parady which may not amount to commercial exploitation of an individual's personality or publicity rights.”
Proceeding on this caution, the Court said that, at the interim stage, it was persuaded to grant protection to Pandey only in respect of three sets of alleged violations.
The same included content portraying him in a sexually vulgar manner, content which monetised his personality for gain without a licence or right to do so, and content involving impersonation of him.
The Court held that Pandey made out a prima facie case in respect of the said three categories. It also found that the balance of convenience lay in his favour and that irreparable injury would be caused if interim protection was not granted.
Accordingly, the Court passed an ex-parte ad-interim injunction against certain defendants in respect of the alleged infringing content.
The Court also directed several intermediary defendants to take down the offending URLs and disclose relevant particulars of persons behind the allegedly infringing accounts and content.
The Court directed that if Pandey discovers that any mirror websites of the identified defendant websites are infringing his copyright in their content, he would be at liberty to furnish to the concerned ISP or DNR, on affidavit, the particulars of such other websites evidencing prima facie about infringement of his rights to such content.
On this, the Court noted that for an intermediary such as an Internet Service Provider or Domain Name Registrar to enjoy safe-harbour protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, it must operate in a strictly neutral manner and cannot be conferred with discretion to block websites merely on the asking of a party.
However, it clarified that the present order did not delegate such discretion to the intermediaries.
It said that it was not asking the ISP or DNR to decide whether or not to block a website but only giving the task of technically verifying if a given website, that is claimed by Pandey to be rogue, is indeed a mirror website of the defendants' websites against whom an order of injunction was being passed.
“If at the plaintiff's request a website is technically found to be a mirror/alphanumeric/re-direct website of the defendant websites, the concerned ISP and/or DNR is required to enforce the ex- parte ad-interim injunction granted by the present order,” the Court said.
“Furthermore, it may be observed that it is counterintuitive that the plaintiff would at all seek blocking of a website to which they have granted an appropriate license; and therefore, this court does not discern any real risk that the plaintiff would misuse the direction granted by this court,” it added.
Title: Alakh Pandey v. John Doe & Ors
Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (Del) 736