AUGUST 22, 2026
Legal battle over AI-generated "Italian brainrot" characters could set copyright precedent
A California court case pitting game developer Do Big Studios against French startup Mementum Lab centers on whether AI-generated characters known as "Italian brainrot" can be owned under U.S. copyright or trademark law. The most prominent character at issue, Tung Tung Sahur, was created by a young Indonesian man using seven prompts in an AI image generator in about 15 minutes. The outcome could affect whether creators of AI-assisted content can claim legal ownership and receive revenue from commercial uses of their characters.
Italian brainrot — a genre of surreal, AI-generated internet characters with faux Italian-sounding names — became a viral phenomenon in early 2025, drawing a global audience of children on platforms like YouTube and Roblox. Characters include Ballerina Cappuccina, a coffee cup in a tutu, and Tung Tung Sahur, a figure resembling a wooden stick with human limbs holding a baseball bat. The characters quickly attracted commercial interest, spawning merchandise, video games, and media deals.
Do Big Studios, the company behind a top Roblox game called "Steal a Brainrot," filed suit after receiving a licensing demand from Mementum Lab, a French startup representing the original creators of several brainrot characters. Do Big's legal team, at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, argued that because the characters were generated by AI, they lack the human authorship required for copyright protection under U.S. law. "The U.S. Copyright Office has been clear that simply typing prompts into an image generator is not authorship," said Aaron Moss, the lawyer representing Do Big.
Mementum Lab countersued, asserting trademark infringement rather than copyright. The company's U.S. counsel, Steven Stein of Greenberg Glusker, argued that Tung Tung Sahur's creator — an Indonesian man known online as Noxa — exercised meaningful human creativity in conceiving the character, which is rooted in the Indonesian cultural practice of striking a traditional drum called a kentongan during Ramadan. Stein said the 30-second threshold for copyrightability is low: "If I sat here right now and drew a picture of something and spent 30 seconds doing that, that could be copyrightable."