Disney Enterprises, Marvel, LucasFilm, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Universal City Studios and Dreamworks just filed a copyright lawsuit against Midjourney in the Central District of California. The docket is here.
The movie studios are represented by Jenner & Block attorneys David Singer, Julie Shepard, and Lauren Greene, out of the LA office.
This raises the lawsuits to 42 copyright suits filed against AI companies in the United States and the second one against Midjourney (in addition to Andersen v. Stability AI).
I suspect the movie studios were not eager to file a copyright lawsuit against AI companies and hoped to avoid one if possible. The studios do have their own interest in using AI generators in moviemaking, at least in some aspects. For basically two years, the movie studios stood on the sidelines as others filed lawsuits, including companies in the music industry. But the prospect that Midjourney will be deploying a video generator in the near future, coupled with its apparent failure to implement greater guardrails to prevent its generator from recreating Disney and Universal characters (discussed in the Complaint), probably was the final straw.
Notably, the movie studios attached as exhibits their cease-and-desist letters demanding that Midjourney implement greater guardrails to stop the generation of their characters. Apparently, Midjourney didn’t–or at least not to the satisfaction of Disney and Universal. Indeed, the Complaint alleged that Midjourney didn’t even reply to Universal’s letter and gave only a brief acknowledgment of Disney’s letter but never followed up. Oh my.
DOWNLOAD THE COMPLAINT OF DISNEY AND UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS
EXAMPLES OF CHARACTERS DISNEY ALLEGED THAT MIDJOURNEY RECREATED (excerpted through p. 77 of the Complaint with other examples not excerpted here)
DOWNLOAD THE LETTER DISNEY ATTORNEYS SENT TO MIDJOURNEY IN NOV. 2024
DOWNLOAD UNIVERSAL LETTER TO MIDJOURNEY
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