In June, Disney and Universal teamed up for a lawsuit against Midjourney, the AI image generation tool. In their filing, the companies called Midjourney a “bottomless pit of plagiarism” that generates “endless unauthorized copies.” Midjourney is also being sued by Warner Bros. Discovery for similar reasons.
Since that initial filing, the court case has been mostly getting things organized and preparation for a possible trial with disclosure forms, attorneys being hired, and time frames extended.
We now have two bigger developments, Midjourney’s response to the initial lawsuit as well as a plan for discovery.
Midjourney responded to Disney and Universal’s complaint asking for a Jury Trial in their August filing. The filing goes into the history of Midjourney describing their process as “s akin to how humans learn to draw or paint—not by memorizing individual artworks, but by internalizing patterns and techniques through repeated exposure and practice.”
They go on to say both Disney and Universal have benefited from what Midjourney and other AI tools do, stating that dozens of Midjourney subscribers have Disney and Universal email addresses and that Disney CEO Bob Iger said that AI is “an invaluable tool for artists.”
The filing by Midjourney takes the “Fair Use” defense saying what they do is transformative and that it’s not Midjourney isn’t infringing, it’s the users of the tool it is. They claim in their response that the Midjourney terms of service require users to refrain from “infringing the intellectual property rights of others,” but how are they to know as a tech company if the users are and there are “legitimate, non-infringing grounds to create images incorporating characters from popular culture.”
Midjourney then states Disney and Universal should have followed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act process and gone through the takedown procedure by identifying specific images Disney and Universal believe are infringing and provide URLs where they’re displayed. It would have allowed accused individuals to respond.
Midjourney states they aren’t “profiting” off of the claimed infringement and there isn’t “harm” identified by the complainants. According to our searches, Midjourney had $200 million in revenue in 2023, $300 million 2024, and an estimated $500 million in 2025. profit is not publicly available information.
Midjourney ends their opening argument that the law recognizes you need to allow limited use of copyrighted material to create new technologies.
The rest of the filing are specific responses to Disney and Universal’s complaint with much of it being “prove it in court.”
The second major update has to do with next steps, like discovery and proposed trial dates. Discovery, in short, is the process where a side asks the other for documents, aka evidence. They then go through the documents to see what can be handed over, and then lawyers comb through the documents to find information that helps their case. It can involve millions of documents and a pretty important part of the process.
Judge John A. Kronstadt submitted some documents to instruct both sides on next steps.
The first is a report needs to be filed with a lot of information like what the general information is about the case, timetables, a discovery plan, any settlement discussions, damages, insurance coverage, witnesses, if it should be done over conference phone, and more.
That court requirement has been filed with timetables and more. It is believed the trial itself will require 14 court days but they two sides didn’t agree on the discovery aspect, instead each coming up with proposals.
The timetable proposed, by either side, would have this case going well into 2027 as each side does discovery, talks to witness, and then rebuts with more discovery and talking to witnesses.
