Additional landmark cases relevant to immersive media

Immersive media-specific case law is still developing. The following decisions provide established legal principles that can be applied to virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), spatial computing, immersive gaming, and virtual environments. They are not all direct VR cases; their relevance is comparative and analogical.

Case 13: Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (2017) — India

Principle: Privacy as a fundamental right.

The Supreme Court of India recognised privacy as a fundamental right protected by the Constitution, including aspects of personal autonomy, dignity, and informational privacy.

Application to immersive media: VR and AR systems may collect eye movements, facial expressions, body movement, spatial maps, voice recordings, and behavioural patterns. Some data may reveal sensitive information about a person's identity, interests, emotional responses, or physical surroundings.

A future legal framework should require lawful and transparent data practices, appropriate security, limits on secondary use, and meaningful user control over sensitive data.

Case 14: Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) — India

Principle: Freedom of expression and constitutionally valid restrictions on online speech.

The Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, because its vague and overbroad restrictions violated freedom of speech and expression.

Application: Immersive environments may host political speech, artistic expression, virtual demonstrations, and social interaction. Content moderation rules should be sufficiently clear and proportionate, while still allowing lawful intervention against threats, harassment, and other conduct that falls within valid legal restrictions.

The case does not prevent all regulation of immersive content; it requires constitutional scrutiny of restrictions on expression.

Case 15: Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v. Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal (2020) — India

Principle: Authentication of electronic evidence.

The Supreme Court clarified the requirements governing the admissibility of electronic records under the former Indian Evidence Act, including the statutory certificate requirement for relevant secondary electronic evidence.

Application: Immersive media may generate complex evidence, including spatial recordings, VR reconstructions, movement logs, and simulated accident scenes. Courts should distinguish between an actual recording of events and a reconstruction created from assumptions or incomplete data.

Evidence should be authenticated, its provenance documented, and any manipulation or uncertainty disclosed. The current procedural framework under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 must be considered for proceedings governed by that legislation.

Case 16: R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (1994) — India

Principle: Privacy, publication, and personal autonomy.

The Supreme Court examined the relationship between privacy and publication, including circumstances in which personal information may be published without consent and the limits applicable to state interference.

Application: An immersive experience may recreate a real person's home, body, voice, or private life. A publisher may face legal risks if a virtual environment discloses private information or creates a misleading depiction of a person.

The legal analysis depends on the content, the public-interest context, applicable privacy rules, and whether the use is authorised or otherwise legally justified.

Case 17: White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc. (1992) — United States

Principle: Commercial appropriation of identity and publicity rights.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered an advertisement that evoked the identity of a well-known television personality through a robot and set design, even though it did not use her actual photograph.

The court allowed the claim under California's publicity-rights framework to proceed.

Application: An avatar, digital double, or virtual character may evoke a real person's identity through appearance, voice, gestures, or other distinctive characteristics. Depending on the jurisdiction, unauthorised commercial use may raise personality-rights, publicity-rights, passing-off, or related claims.

The case does not mean every resemblance or parody is unlawful. Freedom of expression, parody, transformative use, and the applicable statutory exceptions must also be considered.

Case 18: ZeniMax Media Inc. v. Oculus VR, LLC (2017) — United States

Principle: Confidential information, intellectual property, and contractual obligations in virtual-reality technology.

A federal jury found liability on certain claims involving the development of Oculus VR technology, including breach of a non-disclosure agreement and other claims. The litigation concerned the transfer and use of confidential information in the development of VR technology.

Application: Immersive media businesses often rely on source code, software architecture, design files, hardware specifications, trade secrets, and confidential commercial information.

The case illustrates the importance of confidentiality agreements, careful ownership arrangements, and documented development histories. It also shows why claims involving copyright, trade secrets, patents, and contractual obligations should be analysed separately rather than treated as interchangeable.

Case 19: Informa Markets India Pvt. Ltd. v. M/s 4PInfotech (2024) — Delhi High Court, India

Principle: Copyright protection does not extend automatically to a generic idea.

The Delhi High Court considered a challenge to copyright registration for a work described as a “Virtual Expo.” The court held that a generic idea expressed without the requisite originality or creativity is not copyrightable and ordered removal of the challenged registration.

Application: Immersive media projects frequently combine virtual exhibitions, interactive environments, 3D visualisations, and gamified experiences. Copyright may protect original code, graphics, audiovisual material, and other qualifying expression, but it does not automatically confer ownership over a general idea for a virtual exhibition or an abstract user-experience concept.

Contracts, patents, trademarks, confidentiality, and other applicable rights may still be relevant, depending on the facts.

7. Core legal issues in immersive media

A. Privacy, biometric data, and surveillance

Immersive devices can collect substantially more information than conventional websites. Eye tracking, facial movements, hand gestures, voice patterns, spatial mapping, and motion data may reveal highly personal characteristics.

A future legal framework should distinguish ordinary device telemetry from sensitive biometric or behavioural data. It should address:

Lawful grounds for collection and processing.

Purpose limitation and data minimisation.

Retention and deletion policies.

Protection of bystanders whose surroundings are scanned.

Special safeguards for children.

Restrictions on using sensitive data for advertising, profiling, or employment decisions.

Security requirements for cloud-based immersive environments.

In India, constitutional privacy principles and applicable data-protection legislation are relevant. In the EU, the GDPR may apply, including heightened requirements for certain categories of sensitive data. The legal obligations depend on the data, purpose, parties, and jurisdiction.

B. Intellectual property and virtual property

Immersive media combines many forms of intellectual property. A single virtual environment may contain software, music, artwork, fictional characters, branded objects, recorded performances, and user-generated content.

The principal questions include:

Who owns the underlying software and original content?

Does placing a copyrighted object into an AR environment reproduce or adapt a protected work?

Does a virtual item infringe a trademark or create confusion about sponsorship?

Who owns content created by users or generated with AI tools?

What rights does a platform have to remove, modify, or commercially exploit user content?

Can a purchaser transfer, resell, or inherit a virtual asset?

The legal status of a virtual item depends on the rights actually granted. A platform may provide a limited licence rather than ownership of the underlying intellectual property. Describing a virtual asset as “owned” does not necessarily override copyright, trademark, contract, or consumer law.

C. Avatar identity and personality rights

Avatars can reproduce real people's faces, voices, body movements, and distinctive characteristics. Unauthorised use may raise questions of privacy, defamation, impersonation, passing off, personality rights, or commercial appropriation.

Future legislation should distinguish among:

A person's authorised avatar.

A fictional character that does not identify a real person.

A realistic digital replica used commercially without consent.

Parody, satire, artistic expression, or political commentary.

Fraudulent impersonation or non-consensual intimate imagery.

Remedies should be proportionate. They may include removal, correction, damages, disclosure of the responsible account, or an injunction where legally justified.

D. Harassment, assault-like conduct, and psychological injury

Immersive environments can make harassment feel immediate and physically proximate. Conduct may include simulated physical aggression, stalking, sexual harassment, threats, coordinated abuse, and non-consensual recording.

Whether a particular act amounts to a civil wrong or crime depends on the applicable law and the facts. A virtual interaction is not automatically equivalent to physical assault, but neither should the use of a virtual setting automatically exclude legal protection.

Platform operators should implement reporting mechanisms, user blocking, moderation, evidence preservation, and emergency escalation. Serious incidents may require access to courts or law-enforcement authorities.

E. Consumer protection and product liability

VR headsets, haptic devices, AR glasses, and immersive software can create risks through defects, misleading claims, inadequate warnings, or unsafe design.

Potential claims may concern:

Defective hardware or software.

Misleading representations about capabilities or safety.

Unclear recurring charges or virtual-item purchases.

Failure to disclose material limitations.

Injury caused by foreseeable product risks.

Unfair restrictions on refunds or cancellation.

Manufacturers, software providers, sellers, and platform operators may have different responsibilities. Liability should be determined under the applicable consumer, contract, and product-liability rules.

F. Evidence and virtual reconstructions

Immersive technology can help courts understand complicated events through 3D reconstructions, simulated environments, and spatial visualisation. However, a persuasive visualisation may also influence a fact-finder more strongly than the underlying evidence warrants.

A sound evidentiary framework should require:

Disclosure of whether a scene is recorded or reconstructed.

Authentication of source data.

Documentation of software, assumptions, and transformations.

Preservation of the original evidence.

Explanation of uncertainties and alternative reconstructions.

A fair opportunity for the opposing party to test the method.

A realistic VR reconstruction should not be treated as proof that every depicted detail actually occurred.

8. Comparative future regulatory models

A strong future system would combine these models. General civil-law principles should continue to apply, while targeted rules address risks that immersive technologies create or intensify.

9. Recommendations for a future-ready immersive media framework

Privacy by design: Minimise sensitive data collection and build security into immersive products from the outset.

Clear consent: Explain what is recorded, how information is used, and when it may be shared.

Intellectual-property clarity: Establish transparent rules for licensing, user-created content, digital replicas, and virtual assets.

Avatar protection: Provide effective remedies for impersonation, unlawful commercial exploitation, and serious identity-based abuse.

Safe immersive environments: Require proportionate moderation and reporting procedures for foreseeable forms of harassment.

Consumer safeguards: Disclose product risks, recurring charges, virtual-item limitations, and refund conditions.

Reliable digital evidence: Authenticate immersive recordings and reconstructions and disclose technical limitations.

Child protection: Use age-appropriate design, suitable privacy defaults, and safeguards against exploitation.

Accountable AI integration: Require human review and meaningful explanations where automated systems make consequential decisions.

Accessible justice: Provide practical complaint mechanisms, effective remedies, and cross-border cooperation where necessary.

10. Conclusion

Civil law and comparative future immersive media legal frameworks concern how established legal rights should operate in environments where digital and physical experiences increasingly overlap.

The Indian privacy and electronic-evidence decisions, the US publicity-rights and VR intellectual-property litigation, and the Delhi High Court's decision concerning copyright in a virtual exhibition all illustrate important principles. These include privacy, identity protection, contractual responsibility, evidentiary reliability, and the limits of intellectual-property rights.

No single legal doctrine can address every immersive-media dispute. A virtual environment may simultaneously raise questions of copyright, data protection, consumer law, contractual liability, personality rights, and freedom of expression.

The central objective should be to ensure that immersive technology expands human creativity and participation without creating spaces where legal rights become ineffective. Future frameworks should be technologically informed, proportionate, enforceable, and grounded in the fundamental principles of civil justice.

This is a comparative educational overview, not jurisdiction-specific legal advice. The applicability of each case depends on its actual holding and the relevant statutory framework; several of the decisions discussed establish general principles rather than rules specifically developed for VR or AR.