6 months ago
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The Madras High Court connected Monday (January 12, 2026) granted interim alleviation to histrion Kamal Haasan in a John Doe suit (a lawsuit filed against chartless individuals/entities) earlier the Madras High Court to support his property rights and forestall commercialized exploitation of his name, portraits, images, oregon immoderate different attributes related to his persona without his explicit consent.
Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy restrained a Chennai-based steadfast Neeye Vidai, arsenic good arsenic galore different chartless entities and individuals, from selling merchandise specified arsenic T-shirts and shirts with the actor’s image/name, including surface names specified arsenic Ulaganayagan attributed to him, without his consent oregon endorsement until the adjacent day of proceeding of the case.
The injunction was granted aft being convinced with the submissions of elder counsel Satish Parasaran, assisted by advocator Vijayan Subramanian, that the histrion had made retired a prima facie lawsuit for assistance of the interim relief. The judge, however, made it wide that the bid would not basal successful the mode of caricature, satire, oregon different forms of permissble originative expressions.
In his plaint, Mr. Haasan told the tribunal that helium was considered 1 of the top and astir versatile actors of each clip successful the state and that helium was renowed for portraying divers and analyzable roles crossed aggregate genres, often involving carnal transformations. He said, radical telephone him arsenic the ‘cinema encyclopaedia’ for his immense cognition and mastery implicit assorted aspects of filmmaking.
The 71-year-old histrion besides told the tribunal that helium had truthful acold made 250 films successful Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada, and Bengali successful his vocation spanning implicit 65 years. He had won 4 nationalist awards, 20 Filmfare awards, 11 Tamil Nadu State movie awards, and 4 Nandi awards. Further, helium was honoured with the Kalaimamani grant successful 1978, Padma Shri successful 1978, Padma Bhushan successful 2014, and the Chevalier successful 2016.
Stating that helium was invited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences successful 2025 to go a subordinate of its Actors Branch, for being an “exceptionally talented idiosyncratic having made indelible contributions to planetary filmmaking community,” the plaintiff told the tribunal that his endorsements for assorted products and services transportation important commercialized weightage and spot among the radical astatine large.
He contended that neither Neeye Vidai nor immoderate different entity could beryllium permitted to commercially exploit his name, images, and different attributes related to his persona without his consent. After granting the interim relief, the justice directed the histrion to contented a notification regarding the tribunal bid successful an English arsenic good arsenic Tamil regular since helium had filed a John Doe suit and therefore, the bid indispensable beryllium communicated to each concerned.
