Do Big Studios Takes Mementum Lab to Court Over AI Meme Rights

Key Takeaways

• Do Big Studios argues that AI-generated Italian brainrot characters are not protected by copyright because they lack sufficient human authorship.
• Mementum Lab has countersued under trademark law, seeking compensation for the use of Tung Tung Sahur in the Roblox game Steal a Brainrot.
• The dispute could influence licensing, provenance, and risk-management practices across gaming, media, advertising, and other generative AI markets.

A California court dispute between Do Big Studios and Mementum Lab is turning an absurdist internet meme into a consequential test of commercial rights in AI-generated content.

Do Big Studios created Steal a Brainrot, a hit game on Roblox in which players collect and steal characters associated with the online phenomenon known as Italian brainrot. The game attracts hundreds of thousands of concurrent players, according to NPR, placing potentially many millions of dollars in revenue at the center of the litigation.

Italian brainrot recently emerged through bizarre, AI-generated characters with faux Italian names. La Vaca Saturno Saturnita is a cow with the body of Saturn and large human feet. Ballerina Cappuccina is a cup of coffee wearing a tutu. The nonsensical aesthetic is part of the appeal, particularly among children.

Tung Tung Sahur is one of the genre’s most recognizable figures. The character appears to be a wooden figure with human limbs, a face, and a baseball bat. Its origin, however, is tied to Indonesian culture rather than Italy.

Court records identify the creator as a young Indonesian man. He reportedly produced Tung Tung Sahur in 15 minutes with seven prompts submitted to an AI image generator. The figure represents a kentongan, an Indonesian drum used during Ramadan to wake people for sahur, the meal eaten before the daily fast. “Tung tung” refers to the sound of the drum.

Mementum Lab represents the creator and other young artists whose characters appear in Steal a Brainrot. After the game became a major Roblox title, Mementum Lab contacted the game’s creator and owner of Do Big Studios to request licensing negotiations.

Do Big Studios responded through litigation rather than a licensing agreement. In an amended complaint filed in July, Do Big Studios said Mementum Lab’s claimed rights do not exist because copyright law requires human authorship, and AI-generated material does not qualify.

U.S. policy does not treat every work involving AI uniformly. The U.S. Copyright Office has affirmed that AI-assisted material can receive copyright protection when a person contributes enough copyrightable expression. Whether that threshold has been reached is evaluated case by case. A 2024 ruling similarly rejected an AI system as the sole inventor while leaving room for human authors to use AI within a protected creative process.

So where do seven prompts and a culturally specific concept land? There is no established prompt count that automatically creates authorship. A University of California, Los Angeles law professor noted that courts are still determining how much human participation AI-assisted works require. Legal experts also observe that the traditional standard for originality is relatively low.

Mementum Lab has taken a different route by countersuing for trademark infringement. Copyright protects original expression, while trademark generally protects identifiers that tell consumers where goods or services come from. Mementum Lab has not tried to register a U.S. copyright for Tung Tung Sahur, according to an attorney from Greenberg Glusker representing the company.

That strategy could let Mementum Lab pursue damages tied to unauthorized commercial use without immediately resolving whether the creator owns the AI-generated image under copyright law. An attorney from Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp representing Do Big Studios argues that the trademark approach reflects weakness in Mementum Lab’s copyright position. Legal scholars, meanwhile, have questioned whether using trademark law this way stretches it beyond its intended purpose.

The ramifications extend beyond one Roblox game. Generative AI systems from OpenAI, Stability AI, Adobe, Midjourney, and other providers have made it faster to produce characters, advertising assets, and product concepts. McKinsey estimates that generative AI could contribute between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion in annual global economic value, with media and entertainment among the sectors likely to experience substantial effects.

Governance practices are beginning to catch up. The NIST Generative AI Profile identifies intellectual property and data provenance as risk categories for organizations deploying generative AI. For businesses, that points toward retaining prompts, output histories, editing records, model terms, and creator agreements. A funny character made in 15 minutes can become a global property surprisingly quickly. The paperwork may determine who gets paid when it does.