OpenAI said Thursday it reached a three-year licensing agreement with Disney that allows OpenAI's Sora AI video platform to use Disney intellectual property in short, user-prompted videos. Some of those videos will stream on Disney+, it said. The agreement will see Disney make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI and receive warrants to purchase additional equity. It said Disney also will be a major OpenAI customer and deploy ChatGPT for its employees.

Law firm Morgan Global has dropped its lawsuit against Disney seeking a declaration by the court that the firm's ad using an adaptation of the Steamboat Willie animated short doesn't violate any Disney trademark or intellectual property rights. Morgan Global filed a notice of voluntary dismissal (docket 6:25-cv-01795) Wednesday with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Morgan Global said in its notice that Disney hadn't yet been served with the suit.

The music labels suing Cox Communications for contributory copyright infringement ignore all the cases holding that there can't be aiding-and-abetting liability unless the defendant engaged in an affirmative, culpable act intending to further the misuse, the cable ISP told the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday in a reply brief (docket 24-171). Cox is challenging an appellate court finding that it contributed to online music piracy by its broadband subscribers (see 2408160034). It said the music label respondents don't have cases supporting their position and are instead urging SCOTUS "to draw a remarkable, and legally impermissible, inference" that Congress is fine with the theory that not terminating an internet subscriber after getting two notices of their copyright violations makes the ISP a willful contributory infringer for all future infringement. But the Digital Millennium Copyright Act expressly prohibits that inference, Cox argued. The music industry's notice-and-terminate regime "would have seismic and dangerous ramifications [and] only Congress has the power to impose a framework with such vast national implications."

Generative AI platform Midjourney, Disney, Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery have agreed to consolidate the two suits brought by the content companies against Midjourney, according to a joint stipulation to consolidate filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for Central California (docket 2:25-cv-05275). Both suits accuse Midjourney of direct and secondary copyright infringement by using content owned by the companies' studios to train its AI models (see 2510080029).

Parties including author groups and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) are backing a set of music label plaintiffs as Cox Communications appeals its liability for contributory copyright infringement stemming from piracy by some of its internet subscribers (see 2408160034). Amicus briefs were posted Wednesday from the Motion Picture Association and recording artist and songwriter organizations (see 2510220022).

Cox Communications is seeking "a tectonic change to the long-settled standard for contributory copyright infringement," the Motion Picture Association told the U.S. Supreme Court. In amicus briefs Wednesday (docket 24-171), MPA and songwriter and recording artist interests backed the music label plaintiffs as Cox appeals its liability for contributory copyright infringement stemming from piracy by some of its internet subscribers (see 2408160034).

The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday in docket 24-171 that it would hear oral argument Dec. 1 in Cox Communications' appeal of the decision finding it liable for contributory copyright infringement due to piracy by some of its internet subscribers (see 2408160034).

Cox Communications' arguments that it's being sued for secondary copyright infringement liability merely for providing services capable of infringing use are wrong, Sony Music and other music labels told the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. In a respondent brief (docket 24-171), the labels said Cox "made a deliberate and egregious decision" to maximize profits by supplying habitual offenders with the means for massive copyright infringement, knowing they would keep infringing. "While Cox waxes poetic about the centrality of internet access to modern life," it sidesteps the fact that it readily terminates subscribers for nonpayment, the music labels said. They added that SCOTUS has long held that companies providing services to customers with the expectation the services will be used to infringe are contributorily liable if the customers do so. Cox "identifies no reason to disturb that longstanding and commonsense rule."

Generative AI firm Midjourney, which faces a pair of similar direct and secondary copyright infringement lawsuits, is offering nearly identical defenses in both. In a response filed Tuesday (docket 2:25-cv-08376), Midjourney told the U.S. District Court for Central California that Warner Bros. "cannot have it both ways" by using generative AI tools, including Midjourney's, in such areas as visual effects, while also accusing those tools of wrongdoing when they use the studios' material to train AI models. Midjourney argued much the same in August in its reply to copyright litigation brought by Disney and Universal (see 2508080019). Warner Bros. filed its suit against Midjourney in September.

The release of OpenAI's video app, Sora 2, has resulted in a proliferation of videos showing up on social media that infringe on Motion Picture Association members' content and characters, MPA CEO Charles Rivkin said Monday. He called on OpenAI to acknowledge that it's the generative AI platform's responsibility, not rightsholders', to prevent infringement on the Sora 2 service.