A US federal court has rejected Chinese AI company MiniMax’s attempt to toss out a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by some of Hollywood’s biggest studios. The ruling keeps alive claims that MiniMax scraped protected content, including Marvel and Star Wars characters, to train its Hailuo AI image and video generation system.
Judge Stanley Blumenfeld, sitting in the US District Court for the Central District of California, denied MiniMax’s motion to dismiss on May 23, finding that the studios’ claims are plausible at the pleading stage. The case, filed by Walt Disney Company, Comcast’s Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery, is now set to proceed into discovery.
What the studios are alleging
The lawsuit was originally filed on September 16, 2025, by Disney Enterprises and 11 affiliated plaintiffs against MiniMax, SXJT, and Nanonoble. The complaint alleges both direct and secondary copyright infringement, and the studios are seeking damages along with injunctive relief.
The core accusation is that MiniMax allegedly used copyrighted works owned by these studios to train its Hailuo AI system without authorization. MiniMax reportedly marketed Hailuo with the slogan “Hollywood studio in your pocket,” featuring characters owned by the plaintiffs.
Earlier delays stemmed from difficulties serving foreign defendants via the Hague Convention. MiniMax also attempted to get the case thrown out in December 2025, but that effort went nowhere. The judge’s May 23 ruling pushes the litigation into its next phase.
What this means for investors
MiniMax is a well-funded Chinese AI startup. The prospect of damages and injunctive relief, meaning a court could potentially order changes to how Hailuo operates, introduces real uncertainty into its business model.
For the entertainment industry, the case reinforces the leverage that major IP holders have in negotiations with AI companies. Disney alone controls franchises worth tens of billions of dollars. Investors in generative AI startups should be asking pointed questions about training data provenance, because the courts increasingly are.