Bombay High Court: The present interim application was filed in a Commercial Suit instituted by Asha Bhosle, seeking an injunction restraining Defendants 1 to 6 from infringement of her copyright and performer’s rights and the misappropriation of her Personality Rights.
A Single Judge Bench of Arif S. Doctor, J., while observing that unauthorizedly using Asha Bhosle’s persona amounted to infringement of her Personality Rights, granted a temporary injunction in favour of Asha Bhosle and directed that any violative content be taken down, and the infringing websites, platforms and YouTube channels be blocked.
Background:
Asha Bhosle is an eminent and well-known personality in the field of music and has played an integral part in the Indian music industry for over seven decades. She enjoys immense respect, prestige and goodwill both nationally and internationally and has a staggering repertoire of songs comprising various genres. She has also won National and International accolades and awards like Dadasaheb Phalke Award, BBC Lifetime Achievement Award, Padma Vibhushan, and even Grammy Nominations among others. She also has a huge following on her social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, X and YouTube.
Asha Bhosle had filed a Commercial IP suit seeking protection of her personality rights, which would include her name, voice, manner of singing, vocal style and techniques, signatures, photographs, images, and caricatures, as also various other attributes of her personality rights against unauthorised or unlicensed use or commercial exploitation. Her counsel pointed out that the suit also pertained to the violation of Asha Bhosle’s moral rights, which vested in her in respect of her performances, by virtue of Section 38-B of the Copyright Act, 1957 (‘Copyright Act’).
It was contended that Asha Bhosle held the right to control the use of all facets of her personality since the same formed part of her exclusive personality rights and the misappropriation of the same without her consent for any use, commercial or otherwise, was liable to be restrained not only on the basis of the publicity rights but also on the basis of the tort of dilution, more particularly, tarnishment.
Asha Bhosle’s counsel pointed out that Defendant 1 was the owner of Defendant 2, i.e., a website offering a clone of Asha Bhosle’s voice. Defendant 2 was an Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) platform that utilized sophisticated algorithms, enabling any person to sing any song in Asha Bhosle’s voice. They were thus unauthorizedly distorting, mutilating and making modifications to Asha Bhosle’s voice to create AI voice models for the purpose of creating false sound recordings that sounded similar to her voice, vocal techniques, mannerisms of singing and interpretation thereof.
Defendants 3 and 4 (‘Amazon’ and ‘Flipkart’ respectively) were online marketplaces that were displaying, advertising, promoting, and offering for sale posters, wallpapers, portraits, and animated caricatures of Asha Bhosle’s image, photograph, and likeness which were unauthorizedly created by unknown or unidentified entities who were commercially exploiting her publicity and personality rights. Defendant 5 was a sketch artist who sold T-shirts and hoodies carrying images of Asha Bhosle, amongst other celebrities, on his own website, i.e., www.harrytiwari.com.
Similarly, Defendant 6 (‘Google’) was a provider of search and advertising services on the internet. YouTube was Google’s online social media platform for video sharing. There were several videos containing songs with visuals that were uploaded by various unknown persons on YouTube which were never sung by Asha Bhosle. A bare perusal of the description of each of the said videos made it clear that Asha Bhosle’s voice was cloned and AI generated and was not hers at all. Asha Bhosle’s counsel submitted that these videos were uploaded on YouTube for commercial gains by exploiting her rights and therefore, Google was facilitating unauthorised users to proliferate and deliberately use, imitate, misappropriate and exploit Asha Bhosle’s personality rights.
It was argued that permitting the defendants to continue to exploit and violate Asha Bhosle’s personality rights, without her consent, jeopardized her career as a performer and her status as a celebrity and unless reliefs as prayed for were granted, grave and irreparable loss and injury would be caused to Asha Bhosle and monetary compensation would not be an adequate relief.
Analysis and Decision:
The Court opined that it was beyond the realm of doubt that Asha Bhosle was a pre-eminent personality in the field of music and while referring to Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures LLP, 2024 SCC OnLine Bom 2445, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan v. Aishwaryaworld.com, 2025 SCC OnLine Del 5943, held that she had made out a case for the grant of ad interim reliefs, and thus, was entitled to protection of her personality rights, including her name, voice, photograph, caricature, image, likeness, persona, and other attributes of her personality.
The Court observed that Defendants 1, 2 and 5, were unauthorizedly using Asha Bhosle’s personality rights and in making the AI tools available to enable the conversion of any voice into that of a celebrity without his or her permission constituted a violation of the celebrity’s personality rights. Such tools facilitated the unauthorized appropriation and manipulation of a celebrity’s voice, which was a key component of their personal identity and public persona, and such technological exploitation not only infringed upon the individual’s right to control and protect their own likeness and voice but also undermined their ability to prevent commercial and deceptive uses of their identity.
The Court also noted that Defendants 1, 2 and 5 did not appear, even after service, which lent support to Asha Bhosle’s case that their conduct was purely unauthorized and infringing on her personality rights. The Court also observed that the balance of convenience was also entirely in favour of Asha Bhosle and if the ad-interim relief was not granted, she would suffer irreparable injury.
Consequently, the Court granted the following ad-interim relief against Defendant 1, 2 and 5:
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The defendants were restrained by a temporary injunction from utilizing, exploiting, dealing with or violating Asha Bhosle’s personality, publicity or moral rights or passing off their goods and services as those emanating from or being endorsed by her, for any commercial or personal gain.
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The defendants were ordered to take down, remove and block access to any infringing content that was uploaded by them, including all the copies stored in computer records, pen drives, compact disks etc.
Regarding Defendants 3, 4 and 6, the Court passed the following order:
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Defendants 3 and 4 were ordered to take down, disable access and remove all listings or pages that displayed, advertised, promoted or offered for sale posters, wallpapers, portraits, caricatures, merchandise or other goods bearing Asha Bhosle’s name, image, photograph and likeness, within a period of one week.
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The defendants were further directed that if Asha Bhosle notified them in writing of any further infringing listings or pages of a similar nature, they must take them down, subject to their right to communicate to her, with reasons, any objection to such removal.
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The defendants must furnish, upon Asha Bhosle’s request, the basic seller information in their possession to enable her to either implead them as parties to the present proceedings or place their relevant details before the Court.
The case was listed for further hearing on 13-10-2025.
[Asha Bhosle v. Mayc Inc, Interim Application (L) No. 30382 of 2025, decided on 29-09-2025]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For the Plaintiff: Ankit Lohia a/w Vikram Trivedi, Rashid Boatwalla, Lipsa Unadkat and Garima Jain, Advocates i/b Manilal Kher Ambalal & Company.
For the Defendants: Charu Shukla and Amishi Sodani i/b Ms Charu Shukla.
