Legal battles are escalating over the ownership and copyright of AI-generated content. In California, Do Big Studios and Mementum Lab are clashing over the rights to viral "Italian brainrot" characters like Tung Tung Sahur used in a popular Roblox game. Meanwhile, News Corp. is expanding its legal war, targeting not only AI scrapers like Brave but also the clients who purchase scraped data. These cases test the boundaries of human authorship and trademark law in the AI era.
AI-generated content copyright dispute
- ▪News Corp. filed a counter-suit against browser company Brave in July 2026, alleging Brave used masked crawlers to scrape and resell copyrighted articles to AI firms.
- ▪News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson announced during an earnings call that the company will expand its legal actions to sue clients who purchase scraped intellectual property from AI firms.
- ▪A legal battle in a California court between game developer Do Big Studios and French startup Mementum Lab is contesting the ownership and copyright of AI-generated "Italian brainrot" meme characters.
- ▪Brave filed a lawsuit against News Corp. in March 2025, seeking to dismiss infringement claims by invoking the fair use exemption under United States copyright law.
Italian brainrot meme characters
- ▪The character Tung Tung Sahur was created in 15 minutes using seven prompts in an AI generator by an Indonesian creator named Fernanda Bagas Indrastata, known online as Noxa.
- ▪The character Tung Tung Sahur is modeled after a traditional Indonesian drum called a kentongan, which is struck during Ramadan to wake people up for the pre-fast sahur meal.
- ▪"Italian brainrot" memes are weird, AI-generated characters with faux Italian-sounding names that emerged on the internet in early 2025 and became highly popular among children.
Steal a Brainrot game lawsuit
- ▪Do Big Studios filed an amended complaint in July 2026 against Mementum Lab, asserting that AI-generated characters featured in the game Steal a Brainrot are not legally protectable.
- ▪Steal a Brainrot is a highly popular Roblox video game developed by Do Big Studios where players collect and steal AI-generated brainrot characters from one another.
- ▪Mementum Lab filed counterclaims of trademark infringement against Do Big Studios to seek damages for the unauthorized use of the Tung Tung Sahur character in Steal a Brainrot.
Human authorship requirements
- ▪The United States Copyright Office affirmed that AI-assisted work can be copyrighted, but whether human contributions constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
- ▪A 2024 legal case ruled that an artificial intelligence chatbot cannot be recognized as the sole inventor of a product or a piece of art.
- ▪University of California, Los Angeles law professor Mark McKenna stated that using trademark law to bypass copyright questions regarding AI-generated art is a misuse of trademark law.
Commercial licensing revenue stakes
- ▪News Corp. is seeking an injunction and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per copyright infringement in its legal battle against the browser company Brave.
- ▪Mementum Lab co-founder Eben Jeda stated that the original creators of popular brainrot characters should share in the success if they become global entertainment franchises.
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