April 29, 2026
By Emily Poler
About a month ago, the Supreme Court in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment reversed a $1 billion verdict against Cox, an Internet service provider. That verdict stemmed from Cox’s failure to prevent subscribers from infringing Sony’s copyrighted works by sharing pirated copies over Cox’s network. The Supreme Court held that a service provider can only be liable for what is called “contributory infringement” by a third-party (in this case, a user) if the service either induced the infringement or sold a service specifically tailored for infringement. In its decision, the Court held Cox was not liable for contributory infringement because it failed to do anything to affirmatively prevent it. Put another way, Cox’s inaction was not enough to incur liability.
One AI company quickly jumped on this decision to argue that it shouldn’t be liable for what users do with its own platform. In Disney Enterprises, Inc. et al v. MiniMax et al, Disney and other large studios are suing China-based MiniMax and its Singaporean owner Nanonoble Pte. Ltd., which offers an app called Hailuo AI. This app allows users to create short videos in response to prompts and is marketed with the tagline, “A Hollywood studio in your pocket.” In theory, this is cool, except that what Hailuo also does is let users make little videos starring Star Wars and Marvel characters, among other well-known properties.
Since Hailuo is AI, naturally the Plaintiffs claim it was created using unauthorized copies of the studios’ works. And, of course, Plaintiffs say any user output that publicly reproduces Darth Vader, Spiderman et al. are unauthorized copies or derivative works of the studios’ copyrighted properties.
MiniMax makes a bunch of arguments as to why the complaint should be dismissed, some of which have enough teeth to maybe lead to dismissal or partial dismissal. For example, MiniMax argues that much of its conduct took place outside of the United States and, therefore, cannot serve as the basis for a claim under U.S. copyright law. In fact, the Plaintiffs spent months after their initial filing unsuccessfully attempting to serve the Defendants in Singapore and China, and the federal judge in the case had threatened to toss the lawsuit in December as a result of these issues.
Other of the Defendants’ arguments are more, shall we say, creative. MiniMax asserts that while the studios complain that Hailuo’s outputs depict characters from their movies and TV shows, the studios can’t point to specific copyright registrations covering those characters. That argument is a bit much because it seems impossible to obtain an image of, say, the Mandalorian or Iron Man, without reproducing a portion of the copyrighted work they appear in. It seems equally hard to claim that a user can make a Shrek short without intruding on the copyright owners’ rights to make derivative works based on their copyrighted materials.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Cox decision, MiniMax also argues it shouldn’t be held liable merely because it didn’t prevent Hailuo from outputting infringing content, despite having that ability. (The company did put guardrails in place to prevent Hailuo from creating pornographic or violent content.) According to MiniMax, the failure to include these guardrails is, at most, inaction and not an affirmative act, and within the framework of Cox there’s no contributory liability for mere inaction. However, the line between inaction and action is pretty blurry here. Creating and marketing a platform that is appealing because it lets users make fan films of their favorite characters seems pretty active to me.
On top of that, MiniMax is claiming it’s not responsible for user infringement because it didn’t actively encourage that infringement. Really? Hailuo’s tagline of “A Hollywood studio in your pocket” sounds pretty encouraging to me. MiniMax says the slogan describes “the quality and creative capability” of Hailuo,” but I think it could be interpreted as urging users to create works based on those of Hollywood studios. My view is buttressed by the claim, according to the complaint, that MiniMax allegedly used Spiderman in Hailuo’s marketing materials. This type of question — a fact question — is going to make it hard for the judge to dismiss the complaint.
And that means that despite miniMax’s assertions, there should be plenty of action ahead in this case.
April 14, 2026
By Emily Poler
I do not play mahjong. I do, however, have a whole bunch of friends who are very into the game. I sit with them and knit while they play — it’s a low-key, social way to spend a weekend afternoon.
Now, you might be wondering: what is mahjong? Well, mahjong (or mah jongg or mahjongg; they’re all correct) originated in China in the 19th century and is similar to a card game but played with tiles that look a little bit like dominoes. Players draw these tiles and, relying on skill, strategy and luck, try to arrange them into particular combinations to win. In the United States, those combinations are determined each year by the National Mah Jongg League, which publishes an annual card listing the winning hands.
By now, I bet you’re thinking there’s literally no way she’s going to be able to connect this to IP law or litigation. Wrong!
The first time I ever sat to the side of my friends’ mahjong game, I picked up one of the cards sold by the National Mah Jongg League card and was rather surprised to see this:
I was, of course, immediately curious and went to the Copyright Office’s website to look up whether the National Mah Jongg League does, in fact, have a copyright for the card. Yes, it does, and has for many years. And if you’re going to (legitimately) play mahjong in the US, you need to buy that card every year from the League.
Seems weird, right? After all, if you buy Monopoly or a deck of cards, you’re done spending on it. The rules of Monopoly or poker don’t change every year. It doesn’t matter if it’s 1996, 2016 or 2066: a flush always beats two pairs. Most of all, the rules of a game can’t be copyrighted; nobody owns the rules for chess, checkers, or blackjack. However, a book or pamphlet that describes how to play any of those games is absolutely copyrightable. Such is the case with the yearly mahjong card, which expresses the rules for playing mahjong by listing the winning combinations the League has established for that year.
For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen anything suggesting that the National Mah Jongg League has sued anyone who copies a card from a friend, although, if I had to guess, I bet they send plenty of cease-and-desist letters to people offering copycat cards on Amazon or Etsy. (Maybe not, because, according to Reddit, the group isn’t exactly super tech savvy, and their website is pretty 2003.)
Again, I’m an observer, not a player, but one of the fascinating things to me is that players seem really conscientious about actually buying the cards each year. The mahjong group text I’m on was recently awash with people touting they had acquired the 2026 card, even though any of them could just buy one and pass around copies.
In a world awash in so much digital piracy, I find this astoundingly honorable. That said, I suppose it’s not that surprising: for one thing, the card is an awkward shape and folds into several pages, and it would be a pain to copy it or play off a copy. Also, at $15, it’s not terribly expensive. Most of all, I imagine that for those who love the game, buying the card each year is something of a ritual, and it just wouldn’t feel right to use a copy on flimsy printer paper. All this seems like a pretty marked contrast from lots of today’s aggressively online culture, which prioritizes virtual sharing and remixing of non-physical media, and, unfortunately, not paying for stuff. Exhaustion with such probably explains why more and more people are shunning such soulless activity to get together in person and play a game with physical pieces and rules.
In any event, I’m looking forward to a spring and summer of sitting to the side, knitting needles in hand, listening to the murmur of my friends and the clicks of tiles being drawn and discarded.
March 19, 2026
By Emily Poler
The last few weeks have been crazy over here (and, obviously, everywhere), so this post will be relatively brief, but interesting nonetheless. It’s about a proposed class action lawsuit initiated by New York Times writer Julia Angwin against Superhuman Platform, the parent company of writing-assistant software Grammarly. While I haven’t had a lot of time to delve into the complaint, the basics are that beginning last August, Grammarly launched its “Expert Review” tool that offered users the ability to revise text according to recommendations from well-known authors like Ms. Angwin, Stephen King, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Did Grammarly ask permission of these scribes to use their names and writing styles? Of course not!
As you might imagine, Grammarly’s tool is entirely AI-based, having digested the publicly available work of the writers so as to then spit out editing suggestions from what it determines are “relevant experts,” based on the subject matter of uploaded user text. For example, you submit an essay on technology (one of Ms. Angwin’s core subjects) and Expert Review offers improvements it says are “inspired by Julia Angwin.” Pretty amazing stuff, especially considering Grammarly didn’t involve Ms. Angwin in the process.
Even worse than the theft of her style and the use of her name, according to Ms. Angwin, is that the AI advice might (ha! “might”) be crappy. “[A] Grammarly user could become displeased with Ms. Angwin if they…received a negative result after taking that advice (such as a bad grade in school or a negative performance evaluation at work), even though Ms. Angwin had absolutely nothing to do with the advice that she purportedly gave,” the complaint says. Having tested Expert Review herself, Ms. Angwin was appalled by the edits peddled under her name. “Its editing suggestions were so bad that they could destroy my reputation,” wrote Ms. Angwin in a Times opinion piece.
Luckily for Ms. Angwin, even though current laws are, shall we say, in flux regarding the use of AI to digest, learn from, and replicate copyrighted material, her suit rests on far more solid and clearly defined right of publicity laws. These laws, which are on the books in more than two dozen states, bar the commercial use of another’s name or likeness. The authors here have a pretty strong case as Grammarly was using their names without permission. Moreover, it certainly is not crazy for the authors to argue that the use of their names implied that they endorsed Grammarly, which is exactly what the right of publicity is supposed to protect.
How will Grammarly respond? Well, it has already taken down the Expert Review tool “for a redesign,” claiming it had “very little usage.” As for defending itself against the suit, a Superhuman statement says the company “believes the legal claims are without merit.” If you ask me that’s rather optimistic, since it would be quite a stretch to deny that their use of these authors’ names implied endorsement. Grammarly could also try to argue that the authors haven’t been harmed by its use of their names, which might have some legs because reputational damages can be hard to establish. However, such arguments aren’t going to get rid of this case any time soon, nor will the mothballing of the review application which, as Ms. Angwin wrote, “doesn’t make up for the eight months that service was in operation, making money from all of our names without ever seeking our consent.”
March 3, 2026
By Emily Poler
After my last post on Michael Bay’s laughable lawsuit against Cadillac’s Formula 1 team, I feel like carrying on the theme of litigation or claims so absurd they can only bring embarrassment to the party pursuing them. And lucky me, our old friend Martin Shkreli is back with new and bizarre maneuvers in his defense against the lawsuit brought by PleasrDAO. Let’s dive into the latest preposterous developments around our favorite felonious “Pharma Bro.”
In that lawsuit, which I previously wrote about in October, PleasrDAO, a “Decentralized Autonomous Organization” of digital artists and NFT collectors, purchased in 2021 the (supposedly) sole existing copy of the Wu-Tang Clan double CD “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” (the “Album”), which the U.S. Department of Justice seized from Shkreli upon his 2017 securities fraud conviction. When Shkreli originally purchased the Album in 2015, he signed a restrictive agreement preventing him from copying it. Nonetheless, after his release from prison in 2022, Shkreli proudly proclaimed that he had retained digital copies of the Album, and hosted a “listening party” on Xwitter. PleasrDAO soon filed a complaint in New York District Court against Shkreli alleging, among other things, violations of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) and state trade secret law. In September of last year, the Court denied Shkreli’s motion to dismiss, finding that PleasrDAO had adequately alleged that the Album could qualify as a trade secret as PleasrDAO. I found this to be a very interesting, and frankly rather unique, decision.
Well, the lawsuit continues to be interesting, but not for any sane reason — because, Shkreli. In late 2025 or early 2026, he tried to add the Album’s producers and Wu-Tang members RZA and Cilvaringz to the lawsuit. Here, Shkreli argued that he and PleasrDAO had competing claims over who owns the copyrights in the Album, and since those individuals also owned a portion of the copyright to the Album, their participation was necessary for there to be a complete resolution of the matter.
Judge Pamela Chen, however, was having none of this, noting that even Shkreli should understand that the action against him had nothing to do with copyright infringement.
Undeterred, Shkreli tried to sue RZA and Cilvaringz, naming them as “counter-defendants” in the PleasrDFO lawsuit. Once again, the judge rejected him, since neither RZA nor Cilvaringz were parties to the lawsuit. You see, there’s a very basic rule here: a counterclaim has to be brought against an individual or entity that is already a party to the lawsuit — and in this case, the only other party is PleasrDao. Apparently, Shkreli’s attorneys were unfamiliar with this rather obvious procedural requirement.
Sigh. I get it. Sometimes it’s hard to remember the difference between a cross-claim, counterclaim and third-party claim, but come on, “bro.” Look it up before filing something in federal court.
But why stop there? After Shkreli and his lawyers clowned themselves twice, they persisted. Most recently, Shkreli filed a third-party complaint naming RZA and Cilvaringz as defendants, asserting that they are required to reimburse him for any damages he incurs as a result of PleasrDAO’s claims, as well as for his legal expenses. His basis for this claim? The 2015 agreement pursuant to which Wu-Tang sold Shkreli the Album, which provides that Wu-Tang will indemnify Shkreli “in each and any case or proceeding of any type arising out of, in connection with, or in any way related to the Work, the Buyer’s Permitted Uses of the [Album].”
There are so many problems here.
For starters, it’s entirely unclear how this lawsuit is related to Shkreli’s permitted use of the Album. The crux of the issue in the PleasrDAO suit is that Shkreli made copies of the album that he was contractually prohibited from making, and that he has continued to use and broadcast those copies even after forfeiting his interests. That really doesn’t sound like a “permitted” use, does it?
What’s more, it’s not even clear that RZA and Cilvaringz can be sued in New York. According to what was filed, RZA lives in California and Cilvaringz lives in Morocco. Maybe they generously agreed to be sued in New York, but the latest filing is silent on this point.
Also, it seems likely that the government’s seizure of the Album as part of Shkreli’s 2017 sentence included the seizure of all of his rights related to the Album. So if you ask me, he’s got nothing to go on here. But what do I know? I’m not a “Pharma Bro,” and I suppose anything’s possible in the alternate reality such a creature inhabits.
