Lawyers for MiniMax, NanoNoble and Shanghai Xiyu Jizhi Technology have asked a US court to throw out a copyright suit brought by Disney, Universal, Warner Bros. Discovery and a wider group of studio affiliates over the Hailuo AI video and image service. In filings described by MLex, the companies argue that the case overreaches both geographically and legally, setting up an early test of how far US copyright law can reach when an AI platform is operated through entities spread across China, Singapore and the US.

The dispute began in September 2025, when the studios accused MiniMax of building Hailuo AI on what they called stolen intellectual property. CNBC reported that the complaint said the service was promoted as a kind of "Hollywood studio in your pocket", while the Los Angeles Times said the studios alleged the tool could generate well-known characters such as Darth Vader and Wonder Woman without permission. Bloomberg noted at the time that MiniMax, founded in 2021 and based in Shanghai, also runs other generative AI products, including Talkie, a chatbot competing in the US market.

In their dismissal bid, MiniMax and NanoNoble are challenging the studios on several fronts. According to MLex, MiniMax says the US court lacks jurisdiction over the Chinese parent company, while NanoNoble argues that characters are not separately copyrighted simply because they appear in registered works. The filing also contends that the studios have not pointed to registrations that specifically cover the characters at issue, a position that could complicate the case if the court accepts the distinction between the underlying works and the characters embedded in them.

The motion also pushes a broader argument that copyright owners are asking courts to solve a problem that the law is not designed to handle at scale. The companies say the allegedly infringing activity was not carried out by outside users but by the studios’ own prompt-based examples, and they argue that conduct occurring entirely outside the US should not be swept into American copyright claims. That framing echoes a larger industry fight now running through the courts: studios want to prevent AI systems from reproducing protected characters and styles, while developers are increasingly arguing that the rules for policing those uses remain unsettled and are often better suited to legislation or licensing deals than litigation.

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Source: Noah Wire Services