Alakh Pandey v. John Doe(s) & Ors. and the Expanding Jurisprudence on Personality Rights
The Delhi High Court is increasingly witnessing a peculiar category of litigation in which a person approaches the Court seeking protection not merely of a trademark, copyright or reputation, but of the person’s identity itself.
What was once largely associated with film actors and other celebrities has now travelled considerably beyond the entertainment industry. Sportspersons, singers, entrepreneurs, politicians, journalists, spiritual personalities, podcasters and digital creators have approached courts seeking protection against unauthorised commercial exploitation of their names, images, voices and other attributes of their persona.
The latest development brings an educator into this expanding field.
Alakh Pandey v. John Doe(s) & Ors., CS(COMM) 835/2026, before the Delhi High Court, concerns the alleged unauthorised exploitation of the personality of Alakh Pandey, founder of Physics Wallah. The suit, heard by Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani, raises allegations concerning the use of his name, image, voice and distinctive personality attributes in online material, including allegedly commercial content, AI-generated images, stickers and GIFs, as well as allegedly vulgar, sexually explicit and defamatory material.
At the hearing on 4 August 2026, the Court indicated that it was willing to consider interim protection particularly against defendants who were monetising Pandey’s name, while requiring the alleged infringements to be categorised with greater specificity. The Court also questioned the attempt to bring claims concerning trademark, copyright, defamation, libel and personality rights under one umbrella. On 5 August 2026, the Court granted interim protection in respect of specified content and directed removal of identified URLs, while making it clear that entire websites were not to be taken down; the Court also left the issue concerning a particular YouTube video describing Pandey as “Scamwala” for further consideration. [1]
The proceedings are significant not merely because of the identity of the plaintiff. They illustrate the manner in which personality-rights jurisprudence has expanded from the traditional celebrity endorsement dispute into the digital economy, where an individual’s identity may itself constitute a valuable commercial asset.
They also raise a larger question: Does India presently have a sufficiently coherent legal framework to protect personality rights, or are courts being required to define the contours of the right on a case-by-case basis?
The idea of personality rights
There is no comprehensive Indian statute which defines “personality rights” and sets out, in one place, the persons entitled to such rights, the attributes protected, the circumstances constituting infringement and the remedies available.
The expression is generally used to describe the legal interests which a person may have in his or her identity and persona, particularly against unauthorised exploitation. Depending upon the circumstances, this may involve the person’s name, image, likeness, voice, signature, distinctive mannerisms, catchphrases or other attributes by which the person is identifiable.
The jurisprudence has therefore developed through several overlapping areas of law.
The constitutional right to privacy and dignity provides one foundation. Common-law principles of passing off and misappropriation provide another. Copyright and trademark law may become relevant depending upon the subject matter of the dispute. Defamation may provide a remedy where the complaint concerns injury to reputation. More recently, information-technology law and intermediary regulations have assumed importance where the alleged misuse occurs through online platforms.
Personality rights therefore do not exist in a legal vacuum. The difficulty is that they do not presently exist in a single statutory framework either.
The Indian position has largely been constructed judicially.
The constitutional foundation: privacy, dignity and identity
The development of personality rights cannot be considered without reference to the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on privacy.
In R. Rajagopal (R. R. Gopal) v. State of Tamil Nadu, (1994) 6 SCC 632, the Supreme Court recognised the individual’s right to privacy and dealt with the limits upon publication of matters concerning a person’s private life. The decision is significant to the subsequent development of personality jurisprudence because it recognised that the individual’s interest in privacy extends to aspects of identity and personal life and that unauthorised use of a person’s name or likeness may raise legal concerns.
The constitutional foundation became considerably stronger with the nine-Judge Bench decision in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.
The Supreme Court recognised privacy as a fundamental right and located within it concepts of autonomy, dignity and control over aspects of one’s personal identity. The judgment’s discussion of the individual’s ability to control the manner in which his or her identity and image are presented and commercially exploited has subsequently assumed importance in discussions concerning personality and publicity rights.
The significance of Puttaswamy lies in the fact that the underlying interest is not merely the economic value of a celebrity’s endorsement.
There is a more fundamental dimension to identity.
A person has an interest in deciding how his or her identity is represented and used. Commercial exploitation may therefore constitute one form of interference, but it is not necessarily the only one.
At the same time, privacy cannot be treated as a blanket prohibition on all public references to an individual. The circumstances, purpose and nature of the use remain critical.
The subsequent personality-rights cases have largely developed at this intersection between individual control over identity and the freedom of others to speak about that individual.
From privacy to publicity: D.M. Entertainment
The commercial dimension of the right received important recognition in D.M. Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House & Ors., 2010 SCC OnLine Del 4790.
The case arose from the commercial use of the persona of singer Daler Mehndi through dolls and other merchandise. The Delhi High Court considered the right of publicity and the commercial value associated with the identity of a well-known personality.
The importance of D.M. Entertainment lies not merely in the fact that a celebrity’s likeness was used without authorisation. The judgment recognised the underlying commercial principle: where a person’s identity has acquired commercial value, another party cannot simply appropriate that value for its own benefit.
The case also established an important limitation which remains relevant today.
Personality rights do not confer ownership over every reference to a person.
There is a fundamental distinction between commercial appropriation of a personality and legitimate expression concerning that personality.
Parody, caricature, satire and other forms of expression cannot automatically be restrained merely because they refer to a well-known person. If a public personality were permitted to prevent every unflattering reference to himself or herself by invoking publicity rights, the doctrine could easily collide with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and expression.
This tension has remained at the heart of personality-rights jurisprudence.
Commercial endorsement and the right to control association
The commercial character of personality rights was further examined by the Delhi High Court in Titan Industries Ltd. v. M/s Ramkumar Jewellers, 2012 SCC OnLine Del 2382 : (2012) 50 PTC 486 (Del.).
The dispute concerned the unauthorised use of images of Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan from Titan’s advertising campaign in hoardings of Ramkumar Jewellers.
The case demonstrates why personality rights frequently overlap with passing-off principles.
The concern in such cases is not simply that a person’s photograph has appeared somewhere without permission. The more substantial question is whether the use creates an impression of association, sponsorship or endorsement which does not actually exist.
The commercial value of a celebrity’s identity lies substantially in that association.
A person who has built a reputation and commercial goodwill through endorsements is entitled to object when another trader seeks to appropriate that goodwill by presenting the person as endorsing its goods or services.
The Delhi High Court’s jurisprudence thus began to recognise a distinct commercial interest in controlling the manner in which a person’s persona is used in trade.
The right of publicity and the question of who owns the persona
The development of the doctrine also owes much to ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises, 2003 SCC OnLine Del 2, where the Delhi High Court discussed publicity rights in the context of sporting events and recognised the connection between the identity of a personality and the commercial value derived from that identity.
The jurisprudence that followed gradually moved towards recognising publicity as an interest capable of commercial exploitation, while retaining the important qualification that the right cannot be used to prevent legitimate public discourse.
This is an important distinction because publicity rights are sometimes described as though they were simply another species of intellectual property.
They are not.
A trademark protects a mark.
Copyright protects an original work.
Passing off protects goodwill against misrepresentation.
Defamation protects reputation against actionable defamatory imputations.
Personality or publicity rights, by contrast, concern the unauthorised appropriation of the identity or persona of an individual.
The same conduct may engage more than one of these legal doctrines, but the doctrines themselves remain distinct.
The digital transformation of personality
The internet has fundamentally altered the nature of the problem.
The traditional personality-rights dispute involved a photograph in a newspaper advertisement, an image on a product or an unauthorised endorsement.
The contemporary dispute may involve hundreds of URLs, social-media accounts, online marketplaces and anonymous users.
The nature of the alleged infringement has changed as well.
A person’s photograph may be manipulated.
His or her face may be superimposed on another body.
A voice may be cloned.
A digital avatar may be created.
Artificial intelligence may generate a photograph or video which never existed but which appears to depict the real individual.
This raises a question which traditional publicity-rights jurisprudence did not have to confront with the same urgency:
If the defendant has not copied an existing photograph or recording, but has generated a new piece of content which appropriates the recognisable identity of the individual, what exactly has been infringed?
The answer increasingly lies in recognising that the protected interest may be the persona itself, rather than merely the underlying copyrighted photograph or recording.
Anil Kapoor and the expansion of the protected persona
The Delhi High Court’s decision in Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors., 2023 SCC OnLine Del 6914 represents an important development in this direction.
The Court dealt with alleged misuse of various attributes associated with Anil Kapoor’s persona, extending beyond a conventional photograph or name to aspects including his voice, likeness, mannerisms and other distinctive characteristics.
The decision is important because it illustrates how the concept of personality has expanded with technology.
A person’s commercial identity may not reside in a single photograph.
It may lie in the combination of the person’s face, voice, manner of speaking, gestures, expressions and other distinctive characteristics by which the public identifies him or her.
The development assumes particular significance in the age of artificial intelligence. A technology capable of recreating a person’s face or voice can exploit precisely those attributes which make the person identifiable.
The legal issue is therefore no longer limited to copying.
It increasingly concerns digital impersonation and synthetic reproduction of identity.
John Doe orders and the problem of anonymous infringement
The expansion of personality rights has coincided with another important development in civil procedure: the increasing use of John Doe or Ashok Kumar orders.
The traditional civil action proceeds against an identified defendant.
Online infringement frequently does not.
A person may discover that an unknown Instagram account is using his image, that an unidentified seller is marketing merchandise bearing his name, or that an anonymous account has uploaded an AI-generated video impersonating him.
The plaintiff may know the URL but not the person behind it.
John Doe orders developed as a judicial response to this problem.
The concept was initially employed in India principally in intellectual-property disputes. Taj Television Ltd. v. Rajan Mandal, 2003 FSR 22 is generally regarded as one of the early Indian instances in which the Court granted relief against unidentified cable operators in the context of unauthorised broadcasting.
The mechanism was subsequently employed in cases such as ESPN Software India Pvt. Ltd. v. Tudu Enterprise, 2011 SCC OnLine Del 5710, where the plaintiff sought preventive relief against anticipated unauthorised transmission of cricket matches.
The principle was subsequently extended to online piracy, counterfeiting and other forms of widespread infringement.
The reason for the procedural innovation is straightforward.
Where infringement is widespread and the identity of all infringers cannot reasonably be ascertained in advance, insisting upon identification of every defendant before granting effective interim relief may render the remedy ineffective.
The plaintiff must nevertheless establish a prima facie case and demonstrate the necessity of such extraordinary relief. The possibility of overbroad injunctions and interference with lawful activity has repeatedly required courts to exercise caution.
From piracy to personality
The significance of John Doe orders in the present context is that the mechanism has now travelled well beyond piracy and counterfeit goods.
In Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi & Ors., 2022 SCC OnLine Del 4110, the Delhi High Court granted interim protection in favour of Amitabh Bachchan in respect of alleged infringement of his publicity rights and other associated rights.
The Court recorded that the plaintiff was a well-known personality and referred to the recognition of publicity rights in Titan Industries Ltd. v. M/s Ramkumar Jewellers., 2012 SCC Online Del 2382.
The order is important in demonstrating how a procedural mechanism originally associated with anonymous infringement of intellectual property has been adapted to protect the identity of a person.
This development has particular significance today because digital infringement does not remain confined to a single medium.
A person’s identity may be exploited through an online advertisement, an e-commerce listing, a social-media account, a YouTube video, a deepfake or a newly created URL.
The effectiveness of the remedy therefore depends upon the court’s ability to respond to infringement which is both anonymous and rapidly replicable.
Dynamic injunctions and the need for proportionality
The same problem led to the development of dynamic injunctions.
In UTV Software Communication Ltd. & Ors. v. 1337X.to & Ors., 2019 SCC OnLine Del 8002, the Delhi High Court considered the problem of rogue websites and mirror or redirect websites and recognised the utility of dynamic injunctions in appropriate circumstances.
A dynamic injunction is intended to prevent the plaintiff from being forced into a cycle of filing fresh proceedings every time the same infringing material appears at a new mirror or redirect website.
The development is particularly relevant to personality-rights disputes because the same digital content can be reproduced almost instantaneously across different platforms and URLs.
But the history of John Doe and dynamic injunctions also demonstrates why judicial restraint is necessary.
An order which is too broad can affect lawful content along with infringing content.
The problem was highlighted in earlier website-blocking litigation, including Star India Pvt. Ltd. v. Sujit Jha & Ors., CS(OS) 3702/2014, where the scope of blocking orders became a matter of appellate scrutiny.
The Delhi High Court in UTV Software therefore considered the need for proportionality and the availability of less onerous measures.
The principle is important for personality-rights litigation as well.
Protection of a person’s identity cannot mean that an entire website, platform or category of public discussion should be placed beyond access merely because some content on it is allegedly infringing.
The doctrine moves beyond actors and sportspersons
The recent cases demonstrate how far the doctrine has travelled.
The Delhi High Court has considered personality-rights claims involving actors, cricketers, singers, entrepreneurs, politicians, journalists, spiritual personalities and content creators.
The development reflects a broader economic change.
The modern public personality is not necessarily a film star.
A person may acquire a substantial and commercially valuable public persona through YouTube, Instagram, podcasts, education platforms or other digital media.
An entrepreneur may become inseparable from the public identity of his or her business.
A podcaster may be recognised primarily by voice.
A content creator may monetise an audience built around his or her face and personality.
An educator may develop a public persona that becomes closely associated with a particular teaching style, voice, expression or catchphrase.
The law is therefore being required to consider a much broader conception of what constitutes a commercially valuable personality.
The Alakh Pandey litigation: personality rights enter the education space
The Alakh Pandey litigation is significant in this context.
Alakh Pandey is not merely associated with an educational company. He has developed a highly recognisable public identity as an educator and digital creator.
The allegations placed before the Delhi High Court included commercial exploitation of his personality, use of his identity in online promotions, AI-generated images, stickers and GIFs, as well as content alleged to be vulgar, sexually explicit or defamatory.
The Court’s response is particularly noteworthy because it did not treat every grievance as a personality-rights violation.
The Court required the alleged infringements to be categorised and identified. It distinguished between commercialisation, sexually explicit content, satire or parody, and allegations which might properly fall within defamation or other legal frameworks.
That approach is significant.
It recognises that the fact that the same person is the subject of the material does not mean that every legal wrong involving that person is a personality-rights violation.
A commercial advertisement falsely suggesting endorsement is one question.
A defamatory statement is another.
A parody is another.
A copyright infringement is another.
A trademark infringement is another.
The causes of action may overlap in a particular case, but they cannot simply be collapsed into one broad right.
The interim order passed on 5 August 2026 further demonstrates this approach. The Court directed removal of specified infringing URLs and required intermediary assistance in identifying the alleged infringers, while declining to direct the blocking of entire websites. The Court also kept a particular video concerning the description of Pandey as “Scamwala” outside the immediate relief for further consideration. [1]
The distinction is important because it shows the Court attempting to protect a personality without converting the injunction into a general restraint upon criticism or public discussion.
Is every public personality entitled to the same protection?
The expansion of personality-rights litigation inevitably raises a question concerning the threshold.
Does every person who becomes temporarily famous acquire a publicity right?
Does an individual who achieves a single extraordinary result acquire a commercially protectable persona?
The Delhi High Court’s decision in Toprankers Edtech Solutions (P) Ltd. v. LPT Edtech (P) Ltd., 2026 SCC OnLine Del 1772, decided on 13 April 2026, provides an important illustration.
The dispute concerned the use of the identity of the CLAT 2026 AIR 1 candidate in a commercial dispute between competing educational entities.
The Court cautioned against treating a single academic achievement as automatically giving rise to an enforceable personality right. The concern is obvious: if every individual who tops an examination or achieves a single notable success were treated as possessing a commercially protectable publicity persona, the doctrine could expand beyond its intended limits.
At the same time, the Court granted protection against the use of the student’s name, image and likeness in the impugned campaign, including AI-generated or manipulated content.
The distinction is important.
The law may protect an individual against a particular unauthorised use of his or her identity without necessarily declaring that every successful individual has acquired a celebrity-style publicity right.
The question is therefore not simply whether the person is known.
It is whether the nature of the person’s identity, the circumstances of its use and the rights asserted justify the particular relief sought.
This becomes especially relevant as personality-rights litigation moves beyond traditional celebrities.
Personality rights cannot become a substitute for defamation, copyright or trademark
One of the most important lessons emerging from the recent cases is that personality rights cannot become an umbrella remedy for every grievance involving a public figure.
A false statement damaging reputation may constitute defamation.
The unauthorised reproduction of a copyrighted photograph may constitute copyright infringement.
Use of a registered mark may attract the Trade Marks Act.
A misleading representation that a person endorses a product may constitute passing off.
An unauthorised commercial appropriation of identity may raise publicity or personality-rights issues.
The same factual situation may give rise to more than one cause of action, but the legal ingredients of those causes remain different.
This distinction is not merely academic.
It becomes critical when courts are asked to grant broad interim injunctions against social-media content.
A court must determine what exactly is unlawful and why.
The difficult boundary: criticism, parody and satire
Personality rights inevitably come into contact with freedom of speech.
This was recognised in the earlier jurisprudence and remains particularly important today.
A public figure cannot use personality rights to obtain a monopoly over public discussion concerning that person.
A caricature is not necessarily an infringement.
A parody is not necessarily an infringement.
A meme is not necessarily an infringement.
A journalist’s report is not necessarily an infringement.
Political criticism is not necessarily an infringement.
Even a person’s name and photograph may legitimately appear in journalistic or artistic expression depending upon the circumstances.
The question is therefore not whether the person has been identified.
The question is why and how the identity has been used.
The distinction between commercial appropriation and legitimate expression, recognised in D.M. Entertainment, assumes even greater significance in the digital age.
The concern is particularly acute where the plaintiff is a politician, journalist, public commentator or other person whose conduct is legitimately subject to public scrutiny.
A personality-rights doctrine that protects a person’s commercial identity is understandable.
A doctrine that permits the person to control public criticism of that identity would raise an entirely different constitutional problem.
The larger legal question
The trajectory of the jurisprudence is now clear.
The law began with privacy and dignity.
It moved towards recognising the commercial value of identity.
The Delhi High Court developed publicity-rights principles through cases such as D.M. Entertainment, Titan Industries and Anil Kapoor.
John Doe orders, initially developed in the context of piracy and other forms of intellectual-property infringement, were adapted to the protection of personality.
Dynamic injunctions were developed to deal with the rapidly changing nature of online infringement.
And the courts are now confronting AI-generated images, deepfakes, voice cloning and other forms of synthetic identity.
Yet there remains no comprehensive Indian statute governing personality rights.
The result is a largely judge-made framework in which courts are required to determine, case by case, who is entitled to protection, what constitutes infringement, how the right interacts with freedom of speech, and what remedies are proportionate.
The Alakh Pandey litigation brings this problem into sharp focus.
The plaintiff is not a film actor whose commercial persona developed through decades of cinema.
He is an educator and digital creator whose public identity has been built through the internet and the education ecosystem.
That is perhaps the most important development of all.
The question is no longer whether personality rights belong to celebrities.
The real question is:
How far can the law extend personality protection in a society where educators, entrepreneurs, influencers, podcasters, journalists and other digital creators can acquire a recognisable and commercially valuable persona?
And once that question is answered, another follows.
If the protection already exists through constitutional principles, common law, intellectual-property law, defamation law, information-technology law and judicially developed remedies, is there a need for a separate statutory framework governing personality rights?
That is where the debate becomes more difficult.
The absence of a comprehensive statute has allowed the courts to develop the law flexibly and respond to new technologies. At the same time, the absence of clearly defined statutory boundaries creates uncertainty about the threshold for protection, the scope of the right, the duration of the right, its assignability and transmissibility, the remedies available, and the limits imposed by freedom of speech.
The growing number of John Doe suits may therefore be both a sign of the effectiveness of judicial protection and an indication of the limitations of the existing framework.
The question is not whether courts should protect individuals against unlawful exploitation of their identities.
They should.
The more difficult question is whether every new form of exploitation should require another individual to approach the High Court for the law to determine, once again, what the right protects and where its boundaries lie.
The Alakh Pandey case is therefore not merely another personality-rights suit.
It is part of a much larger transition in Indian law: from protecting the commercial image of traditional celebrities to protecting identity in an age where a person’s face, voice, mannerisms and digital persona can be reproduced without the person’s participation.
The law has kept pace so far through judicial innovation.
Whether that is sufficient for the future is a question that can no longer be ignored.
References:-
1. Alakh Pandey v. John Doe(s) & Ors., CS(COMM) 835/2026, Delhi High Court, proceedings/orders dated 5th August 2026.
2. R. Rajagopal (R. R. Gopal) v. State of Tamil Nadu & Ors., (1994) 6 SCC 632.
3. Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) & Anr. v. Union of India & Ors., (2017) 10 SCC 1.
4. ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises & Anr., 2003 SCC OnLine Del 2.
5. D.M. Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House & Ors., 2010 SCC OnLine Del 4790.
6. Titan Industries Ltd. v. M/s Ramkumar Jewellers, 2012 SCC OnLine Del 2382
7. Taj Television Ltd. v. Rajan Mandal, 2003 FSR 22.
8. ESPN Software India Pvt. Ltd. v. Tudu Enterprise & Ors., C.S.(OS) No. 384 of 2011, Delhi High Court.
9. UTV Software Communication Ltd. & Ors. v. 1337X.to & Ors., 2019 SCC OnLine Del 8002 : (2019) 78 PTC 375 (Del.).
10. Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi & Ors., 2022 SCC OnLine Del 4110
11. Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors., 2023 SCC OnLine Del 6914.
12. Toprankers Edtech Solutions (P) Ltd. v. LPT Edtech (P) Ltd., 2026 SCC OnLine Del 1772, decided on 13 April 2026.