A day after actor and Rajya Sabha MP Kamal Haasan filed a case before the Madras High Court seeking protection of his personality rights, the court has granted him interim relief.
Hearing the case on Monday, Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy observed that Haasan had made a strong prima facie case for interim relief and has restrained unidentified people and platform from unauthorised usage and commercial exploitation of his name, pictures and other details without his consent. It has also directed to stop them from disseminating his morphed and AI-generated images. While issuing the order, Senthilkumar said that satire and other permissible forms of creative expression is allowed.
The Thug Life actor had filed a John Doe suit (case filed against unknown people or entities) before the court in the case. Taking note of it, he also directed the order to be published in an English Daily which has a wide circulation to notify the unknown people/entities.
Senior Advocate Satish Parasaran, representing Haasan, told the court that the legal action was initiated to safeguard both the actor’s dignity and his commercial rights, which were being adversely affected by unauthorised online activities.
Haasan pointed to specific URLs through which the infringing material was being disseminated. Parasaran noted that only in a few cases were individuals specifically named, mainly where there was evident commercial exploitation of the plaintiff’s likeness. With regard to commercial misuse, it was argued that Haasan’s name and image were being used without permission on merchandise such as T-shirts and other products where his name, title 'Ulaganayagan' and his famous film dialogues were used without any prior permission. He also pointed out to the AI-generated images and deepfakes that he noted were "unsavoury and harmful", and showed the actor in inappropriate contexts.
Kamal Haasan joins a long list of celebrities who have sought relief in their personality rights cases including Akshay Kumar, Madhavan, Pawan Kalyan, Nagarjuna and Jr NTR, among others.
In the workfront, Kamal Haasan, last seen in Thug Life, directed by Mani Ratnam has the untitled KH 237 from stunt choreographer duo Anbariv. He will also be backing the much-anticipated Thalaivar 173 from Cibi Chakravarthi, through his RKFI banner.
