Roblox game owners sue French agency to test whether an AI-made meme character has an owner

"Mementum's claimed rights do not exist," Spyder Games and Speedy Simulator Gaming wrote in their complaint. "Under established law, copyright protection requires human authorship, and AI-generated material does not qualify." ^[1] The complaint states the skeptic's case without qualification. The Copyright Office's 2025 report treats the same ground as open. "Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis," the report says. ^[10]

The plaintiffs are calling settled a question the Office left to individual judgment ^[1][10]. Under the Office's standard, the court will have to weigh how much control Noxa had over the character's expressive elements when prompting OpenAI's tool ^[9][2].

Both sides are fighting because the character makes money. Its likeness already sells on plushies, perfume and stickers ^[4]. Eben Jeda is co-founder of Mementum Lab, the French agency that represents Noxa ^[5]. He said he started it because the creators of internet-native works are often cut out of the profits ^[12]. "Brain rot is one of the first highly visible manifestations of a much larger transformation: internet native creativity can now become global almost instantly, while the people who originate it can remain economically invisible," he said. ^[11]

Fabian Mosele, a self-described "Italian brain rot expert" who has made several Tung Tung Tung Sahur videos, sees the genre as collectively owned ^[15]. "There are a ton of creators who made these characters come to life," Mosele said. "Before, they were really just images. Having been part of making the virality of these characters, to gatekeep it to the original prompter of this character doesn't seem right." ^[13] Mosele is describing who made the character valuable. The lawsuit asks who authored it ^[1].

A studio holding a claim letter over an AI-made asset has three choices, each with a cost. It can pay a party whose rights may not exist. It can drop a character players already recognize. Or it can pay lawyers to learn whether either of those steps was necessary. Do Big tried pulling the character and negotiating before its owners took the third route ^[8]. A studio that settles this quarter pays before any ruling. One that sues pays legal costs now for an answer that arrives later.

I think the evidence supports calling the ownership of Triple T undecided ^[10]. How deal-makers are pricing that uncertainty is harder to see. The source does not say who granted the Fortnite skin rights or on what terms ^[16], so how that deal handles the authorship question cannot be judged from outside.