Recently, several companies associated with the Chinese artificial intelligence firm Haisheng AI, including Nanonoble Pte. Ltd. (a Singapore-based company and Haisheng AI’s overseas operating entity, hereinafter referred to as “Nanonoble”), Shanghai Xiyu Jizhi Technology Co., Ltd. (the domestic operating entity) and the brand MiniMax, have requested that the US District Court for the Northern District of California dismiss copyright lawsuits brought against them by Disney, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures and other companies.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed by the plaintiffs in September 2025, alleging that the defendants had “massively” stolen copyright-protected works via Haishuo AI and induced users to generate infringing content featuring well-known characters from the plaintiffs’ portfolios, including Disney, Warner Bros., Universal and Marvel.

On 14 April 2026, the defendants filed two motions to dismiss, requesting the court to reject the plaintiffs’ allegations that Haishuo AI’s image and video generation services “misappropriated” their intellectual property. The defendants argued that the plaintiffs had failed to meet the basic requirements of the Copyright Act and that the alleged infringements lacked factual basis.

In its motions, Nanonoble refuted the probative value of the plaintiff’s evidence, stating that “not a single one of the infringing videos alleged by the studios was created by a Haishuo AI subscriber”, but rather that they were “created by the studios’ lawyers themselves to fabricate the appearance of infringement”. Furthermore, the defendant challenged the court’s personal jurisdiction: Shanghai Xiyu Jizhi Technology Co., Ltd. argued that, as a Chinese company, its sole connection to the United States was a trademark application; according to relevant case law, this is insufficient to establish a purposeful direction. Moreover, the brand MiniMax does not exist as a legal entity in its own right, and the plaintiff has not sued any entity whose legal name includes that term.

Regarding the allegations of substantive infringement, Nanonoble argued that the plaintiff had failed to reasonably assert that it held valid, registered copyright in the works involving the characters in question. Furthermore, the Haishuo AI model was developed and trained outside the United States by a non-US entity, and the plaintiff had failed to identify any acts of reproduction occurring within the United States. The defendant also pointed out that its parent company, MiniMax, is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and that the relevant information is publicly available; the plaintiff could have ascertained this through a simple search.

To date, the court has not yet ruled on the motion to dismiss.