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Synopsis

The Bombay High Court has directed social media platforms, including Meta, Telegram, and WhatsApp, to take down a deepfake video of the MD and CEO of the National Stock Exchange urging people to join WhatsApp groups for stock picking.

The single-judge bench of Justice RI Chagla was hearing a trademark application filed by Ashish Kumar Chauhan, MD & CEO of NSE, against the false and misleading claims being made using the NSE logo.

One of the videos posted by the Facebook page ‘Stock Analyst’ showed AI AI-generated replica of the MD & CEO of the NSE persuading the common investors to Join a WhatsApp Community for stock picking.

The video further stated that the professional analysis team of the Chauhan will purportedly recommend 3 carefully selected stocks every week and shall teach the common investors how to pick stocks for monetary gains.

Other profiles included “NSE Stock Market”, “NSE India”, Stock Market Helper”, “Stock Analyst”, “Stock Analyst2”, “Stock Analyst3”, “Stock Analyst4” and “Stock analyst5” in all of which the unknown perpetrators were making unauthorized and illegal use of the NSE trademark by displaying it as the profile picture and illicitly misleading and defrauding the viewers into believing that the said pages were operated by the NSE.

NSE contended that the illegal acts have severe consequences for the fair, efficient and equitable securities market ecosystem endeavoured to be maintained by the NSE.

It was submitted that the continued circulation and/or publication of false and misleading advertisements depicting the NSE’s trademark and featuring the NSE’s MD & CEO as well as the creation of false Facebook profiles/pages will have disastrous consequences on the plight of innocent investors, who believing the Fake Videos to be legitimate would be deprived of their hard-earned money.

The high court while ordering the social media companies to take down the video noted that,

“..the relevant IT Rules and in particular Rule 3 (1) of the IT Rules which provides for due diligence by an intermediary to make reasonable efforts to not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information which inter alia belongs to another person and to which the user does not have any right: infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights and deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of the message or knowingly and intentionally communicates any misinformation or information which is patently false and untrue or misleading in nature and / or violates any law for the time being in force,” the order states

Case title: NSE Ltd vs Meta Inc & Ors