Jackie Shroff, earlier this month, moved to Delhi High Court, seeking to protect his personality rights, restraining entities from making unauthorised use of the actor’s name, voice, images and signature phrase ‘Bhidu’. Following this, the Delhi High Court passed an order protecting Jackie’s personality and publicity rights on May 15. As per Bar and Bench, Justice Sanjeev Narula also ordered to take down a few links which were pornographic in nature and used the actor’s name.

Now, the actor has come forward and reacted to the quick action taken by the Delhi High Court and issued a statement. In his statement with the press, the veteran actor said, ”I am immensely grateful to the judiciary for passing an order that safeguards my personality rights, including my name, image, likeness, voice, and other unique attributes. For a long time, celebrities had little to no recourse against the misuse of their persona. However, I am heartened by the fact that courts have progressively recognised and protected these rights, as demonstrated in landmark cases involving Mr Amitabh Bachchan and Mr Anil Kapoor. These precedents have been very encouraging and motivated me to assert my rights.”

Highlighting further the importance to take cognizance of the unauthorised use and misuse of actor’s attributes in the evolving technological era, he added, ”Celebrities wield significant influence, and such abuse can mislead the public regarding a celebrity’s association with certain goods or services. The misuse of celebrity personas not only dilutes our brand equity but also misguides the public at large.”

Talking further about the need to protect the personality rights of celebrities, he said, ”This protection extends to all forms of media, including digital platforms, and specifically prohibits the use of AI, deep fakes, GIFs, AI chatbots, and similar technologies to exploit my persona without my explicit permission.”

Before Jackie, several other Bollywood stars have protected their personality rights legally.  In 2022, the Delhi High Court passed an interim order restraining persons from infringing the personality and publicity rights of legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan.

Apart from Jackie and Big B, Anil Kapoor also approached the Delhi High Court to protect his personality rights last year. Earlier this year in January, Anil won the case, protecting the unauthorised use of the ‘Jhakaas’ catchphrase, his name, voice, manner of speaking, image, likeness, and gestures.

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