On June 11, 2025, Disney Enterprises, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, Universal and DreamWorks sued Midjourney in the US District Court for the Central District of California, the first direct copyright action by major Hollywood studios against a generative-AI company. The complaint calls Midjourney a “bottomless pit of plagiarism” and alleges it copied protected works for training while distributing unauthorized images of famous characters, as documented by Reuters and the Associated Press. The studios sued because Midjourney allegedly continued generating infringing material despite prior demands for protective measures. The alleged infringement occurs when copyrighted images are purportedly copied into training pipelines and when prompts generate outputs resembling protected characters closely enough to compete with licensed illustrations, merchandise and entertainment content. Midjourney’s anticipated defense is fair use, arguing training transforms publicly available images into a system capable of producing new expression, but the article says fair use requires contextual assessment of purpose, nature, amount copied and market harm. The 2025 ruling against Ross Intelligence rejected fair use where copyrighted Westlaw material was copied to create a competing legal-research product. Midjourney may scrutinize whether studios themselves use generative AI or unlicensed third-party material, but “unclean hands” is not a universal permission slip.