Disney Enterprises, Inc. et al. v. Midjourney, Inc. (No. 2:25-cv-05275-JAK-AJR, C.D. Cal.) is a copyright infringement suit brought in June 2025 by Disney and Comcast's Universal against Midjourney, the AI image- and video-generation company, alleging that Midjourney trained its generator on unlicensed copies of the studios' works and generates outputs depicting their copyrighted characters (Source: courtlistener.com) (Source: mashable.com). A parallel suit by Warner Bros. Entertainment (No. 2:25-cv-08376-JAK-E) was consolidated into the case in November 2025, making the action a joint effort by three major Hollywood studios against a generative AI developer (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com). The case is assigned to District Judge John A. Kronstadt, with discovery disputes referred to Magistrate Judge A. Joel Richlin. As of July 2026 it is in active discovery, with court-ordered private mediation due by August 19, 2026.
Infobox
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Case | Disney Enterprises, Inc. et al. v. Midjourney, Inc. |
| Docket | 2:25-cv-05275-JAK-AJR (lead); consolidated with 2:25-cv-08376-JAK-E (Warner Bros.) |
| Court | U.S. District Court for the Central District of California |
| Filed | June 11, 2025 (Disney/Universal); Warner Bros. suit filed later in 2025 |
| District judge | John A. Kronstadt |
| Magistrate judge | A. Joel Richlin |
| Claims | Copyright infringement (training on and output of copyrighted characters) |
| Status | Active — discovery; mediation deadline August 19, 2026 |
Background and claims
Disney and Universal filed suit in June 2025, accusing Midjourney of building its image generator on unlicensed copies of their copyrighted works and of enabling users to generate images of protected characters; plaintiff entities include Disney Enterprises, Universal City Studios Productions LLLP, and Marvel-affiliated MVL Film Finance LLC (Source: courtlistener.com) (Source: mashable.com). Warner Bros. Entertainment brought parallel claims against Midjourney in a separate 2025 suit that was later consolidated (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com). Midjourney's defenses include fair use.
Procedural history
The parties filed a joint Rule 26(f) report on October 23, 2025, offering competing case schedules about three months apart (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com). In early November 2025 the studios stipulated to consolidation of the Disney/Universal and Warner Bros. actions, which Judge Kronstadt approved, consolidating the cases for all purposes (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com) (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com). A pretrial schedule issued on November 18, 2025 (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com). Judge Kronstadt also ordered the parties to private mediation (ADR Procedure No. 3) with a deadline of August 19, 2026; in December 2025 the parties selected the Hon. Suzanne H. Segal (ret.), a former C.D. Cal. magistrate judge, as private neutral (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com) (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com).
Discovery dispute over the studios' own AI use
In a June 15, 2026 ruling, Magistrate Judge Richlin mostly denied Midjourney's motion to compel discovery into the studios' own use or development of AI, finding such use irrelevant to Midjourney's fair-use defense and citing a similar ruling in the In re OpenAI copyright litigation; the ruling limited discovery to the studios' "consumer-facing" AI applications and also addressed the studios' prompts used to generate infringement examples not pleaded in the complaint (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com) (Source: variety.com).
On July 2, 2026, Midjourney filed a motion urging Judge Kronstadt to overturn the magistrate's ruling. Midjourney attorney Bobby Ghajar argued that evidence the studios internally train image-generating models on unlicensed copyrighted data would support Midjourney's fair-use and unclean-hands defenses; the studios oppose the request (Source: variety.com; techcrunch.com).
Context
The suit proceeds against a backdrop of divergent studio strategies toward generative AI. In December 2025, Disney reached a three-year licensing agreement with OpenAI making Disney the first major content-licensing partner on the Sora video platform, alongside a reported $1 billion Disney stake in OpenAI (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com). In February 2026, AI-generated videos made with ByteDance's Seedance video generator depicting studio-controlled likenesses prompted cease-and-desist letters, including from Disney (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com); by mid-2026 ByteDance was courting studios with Seedance licensing offers over Motion Picture Association objections (Source: latimes.com).
Relationships
- litigates: Midjourney — defendant
- instance-of: AI Copyright — training-data and output-infringement claims
- related: NYT v. Microsoft, OpenAI et al. — parallel training-data copyright litigation; the Richlin discovery ruling cited the OpenAI consolidated litigation
- related: Kadrey v. Meta, Bartz v. Anthropic — other AI training-data copyright cases