Court denies MiniMax's motions to dismiss in Disney, Universal and Warner copyright suit over Hailuo AI

What happened

On 22 May 2026, Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. (U.S. District Court for the Central District of California) denied two motions to dismiss in Disney Enterprises et al. v. MiniMax (No. 2:25-cv-08768-SB-E) — one from the Shanghai-based MiniMax entity and one from the Singapore-based entity, which operate the Hailuo AI video/image platform. The studios allege MiniMax trained Hailuo on their copyrighted film characters, that its outputs reproduce "near-perfect likenesses," and that MiniMax used the characters in advertising on WeChat, TikTok and Instagram — continuing even after a cease-and-desist letter.

MiniMax moved to dismiss on (1) lack of personal jurisdiction, (2) failure to plead ownership of registered character copyrights, and (3) inadequacy of the training/output infringement theory. The court denied both motions: personal jurisdiction holds under Federal Rule 4(k)(2) (the Shanghai entity's USPTO trademark application supports prima facie jurisdiction); the complaint plausibly pleads direct infringement of sufficiently distinctive characters (citing DC Comics v. Towle) through both training and outputs; and contributory infringement via affirmative inducement through targeted advertising. The case proceeds to discovery. These are the court's rulings on the motions; no ruling on the merits has issued.

Why it may matter to you

This is the first U.S. ruling that AI training-and-output copyright claims against a Chinese AI company survive both a personal-jurisdiction and a pleading challenge.

What is not yet known

How the merits come out; the current status of discovery.