Saturday, February 14, 2026

Scoop: Disney sends cease and desist letter to ByteDance over Seedance 2.0; Axios, February 13, 2026

 Sara Fischer, Axios; Scoop: Disney sends cease and desist letter to ByteDance over Seedance 2.0

"The Walt Disney Company on Friday sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging the Chinese tech giant has been infringing on its works to train and develop an AI video generation model without compensation, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: It's the most serious action a Hollywood studio has taken so far against ByteDance since it launched Seedance 2.0 on Thursday. 

Zoom in: The letter, addressed to ByteDance global general counsel John Rogovin, accuses ByteDance of pre-packaging its Seedance service "with a pirated library of Disney's copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney's coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art." 


"Over Disney's well-publicized objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney's characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance's virtual smash-and-grab of Disney's IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable," Disney's outside attorney David Singer wrote. 


"We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg – which is shocking considering Seedance has only been available for a few days," he added.


Between the lines: The letter includes a slew of examples of infringing Seedance videos that feature Disney's copyrighted characters, including Spider-Man, Darth Vader, Star Wars' Grogu (Baby Yoda), Peter Griffin from Family Guy and others."

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