Warner Bros. Complaint Alleges Midjourney’s Copyright Infringement is ‘Systematic’ and ‘Willful’

From the complaint: “If a Midjourney subscriber submits a simple text prompt requesting an image of Superman in a particularsetting or doing a particular action, Midjourney generates and displays a high quality, downloadable image featuring Warner Bros. Discovery’s copyrighted Superman character.”

Warner Bros. Entertainment and four other plaintiffs filed their official complaint late last week against artificial intelligence (AI) image generator Midjourney, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The complaint alleged two causes of copyright infringement of characters through its direct and secondary infringement by operating as a commercial subscription service through AI that “brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property as if it were its own.”

The plaintiffs include Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., DC Comics, Turner Entertainment Co., Hanna-Barbera Productions, and The Cartoon Network, collectively referred to in the complaint as “Warner Bros. Discovery” (WBD).

WBD claimed Midjourney’s AI service was “developed using illegal copies of Warner Bros. Discovery’s copyrighted works” and allows subscribers to generate “infringing images and videos, and unauthorized derivatives, with every imaginable scene featuring those characters.” The plaintiffs alleged that Midjourney’s infringement was “systematic, ongoing, and willful.”

The 87-page complaint included numerous examples of AI-generated images and videos produced by Midjourney in response to prompts such as “classic comic book superhero battle,” featuring WBD’s copyrighted characters without explicitly naming them, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo, Tom and Jerry, Powerpuff Girls, and Rick and Morty.

The complaint accused Midjourney of having the capability and awareness to prevent copyright infringement and said the company “has made a calculated and profit-driven decision to offer zero protection for copyright owners even though Midjourney knows about the breathtaking scope of its piracy and copyright infringement.”

WBD emphasized the secondary infringement claim as an alternative, arguing that if Midjourney contended its subscribers were the direct infringers, the company would still be “vicariously liable for these acts of direct copyright infringement (assuming they are adjudicated to be direct infringement by Midjourney’s subscribers).”

The complaint highlighted that Midjourney had the right and ability to control infringement by controlling training data, blocking infringing prompts, and implementing technological protection measures.

When Midjourney launched video generation capabilities, the service initially refused to “animate” many infringing images of Warner Bros, said the plaintiffs. However, within the last couple of weeks, Midjourney allegedly removed these protection measures and announced the change as an “improvement” in video moderation that would result in “fewer blocked jobs.”

The complaint referenced “Midjourney TV,” a 24/7 video streaming channel launched in July 2025 that WBD described as “yet another avenue for Midjourney to promote, advertise, and publicly perform the videos that its Service has generated and distributed to other subscribers.”

WBD alleged that Midjourney uses its copyrighted characters to market and promote the service, “encouraging even more infringement (and falsely implying Warner Bros. Discovery’s endorsement).” These subscribers are attracted to Midjourney’s Service because of its capacity to generate images that infringe WBD’s copyrighted works, said the complaint.

The complaint emphasized that this type of infringement has led to Midjourney’s economic success and the popularity of its Service, as the company has nearly 21 million subscribers as of September 2024, “surpassed $200 million in revenue in 2023, and hit $300 million in revenue in 2024, despite the company’s relatively short existence.”

WBD is seeking damages and Midjourney’s profits in an amount according to proof, or alternatively, statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringed work for willful infringement. The plaintiffs also requested preliminary and permanent injunctive relief.

WBD stated that it filed its lawsuit “to stop Midjourney’s piracy and to uphold U.S. copyright law and the crucial incentives that reward those who create, not those who take.” The plaintiffs emphasized that copyright protection forms the foundation of investments in creative works and argued that Midjourney’s practices undermine those incentives.

In June 2025, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Universal City Studios Productions LLLP against Midjourney in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that Midjourney unlawfully trained its AI on copyrighted works and produced infringing outputs.

In comments sent to IPWatchdog, Randy McCarthy of Hall Estill noted that WBD has tailored its complaint based on the positions taken so far in the Disney/Universal case. “It appears that WBD has addressed some of the defenses and arguments that Midjourney set forth in the DU case,” however, “the WBD complaint appears to more fully emphasize that Midjourney is secondarily liable for infringement via contributory, inducement and/or vicarious liability by inducing its users to directly infringe.” McCarthy added.

McCarthy also pointed to WBD’s argument that, while Midjourney claims it does not store copies of the works in its model, “in response to certain prompts, Midjourney’s system nonetheless accesses the data relating to the works that are stored by Midjourney’s system. This seems to be a very clever way to counter [Midjourney’s] ‘statistical pattern analysis’ arguments.”