Feb. 18, 2026
So far, Hollywood heavyweights, including Disney, The Motion Picture Association (MPA), and SAG-AFTRA, have all demanded that China-based ByteDance disable the ability to generate copyrighted characters using Seedance 2.0. But this latest missive from the movie business is possibly the most aggressive. Late Tuesday night, Netflix sent ByteDance a letter that demands that the company immediately remove the ability to generate Netflix-owned characters or face a lawsuit. The studio gave ByteDance three days to comply, so the countdown has already begun. The Chinese company now has until at least Friday to respond, or Netflix’s legal weapons will be deployed.
What’s unique about this cease and desist letter, which was obtained in full by Deadline, is that Netflix indicates that ByteDance actually promoted unauthorized Netflix IP with AI videos on its own social media channel (@BytePlusGlobal, an arm of ByteDance).
Below is the full two-page letter sent by Netflix’s director of litigation, Mindy LeMoine, to ByteDance’s General Counsel, John Rogovin.
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February 17, 2026
John Rogovin
Global General Counsel
ByteDance Ltd.
Re: CEASE AND DESIST – Willful Infringement of Netflix’s Intellectual Property by Seedance 2.0
Dear Mr. Rogovin,
I am in-house counsel for Netflix, a global entertainment service that owns and distributes much-loved movies and TV series. We have learned that ByteDance’s recently launched audio-video generative AI model, Seedance 2.0 (“Seedance”), is engaging in the pervasive and willful unauthorized reproduction of Netflix’s valuable intellectual property.
The Infringement: Evidence of High-Fidelity Regurgitation
Seedance acts as a high-speed piracy engine, generating mass quantities of unauthorized derivative works utilizing Netflix’s iconic characters, worlds, and scripted narratives. Current forensic evidence indicates that Seedance is being used to generate unauthorized derivative works including, but not limited to:
● Bridgerton: Unauthorized depictions of Season 4 content, specifically featuring characters in a masquerade ball setting. These outputs mirror specific, narratively important costumes like Sophie Baek’s “Lady in Silver” gown. ByteDance has even promoted this content using #Bridgerton tags via its own official social media channels, such as @BytePlusGlobal.
● Stranger Things: High-fidelity reboots of the series finale, which feature detailed reproductions of the iconic cast as well as the monsters from the series, including Demogorgons and the Mindflayer.
● Squid Game: Seedance has generated recreations of the “Red Light, Green Light” sets and the iconic Young-hee doll. These include unauthorized crossovers, such as inserting real-world figures like Elon Musk into the Squid Game environment.
● KPop Demon Hunters: Seedance has reproduced the specific visual style and character designs from our animated musical feature, including the lead character Rumi.
Netflix has never authorized ByteDance to use our content to generate these images or videos. ByteDance’s activities are willful, and constitute direct and secondary copyright infringement. The use of copyrighted works to create a competing commercial product, especially one that regurgitates the original, is not protected by fair use.
Immediate Demands
To avoid immediate litigation, Netflix demands that ByteDance:
1. Cease Generative Output: Immediately implement technological guardrails to prevent Seedance from generating any content that resembles Netflix’s protected characters, titles, or settings.
2. Remove Infringing Content: Remove all unlawfully obtained Netflix-owned content from training datasets, and also scrub all existing Seedance-generated videos featuring Netflix IP from all ByteDance-controlled platforms.
3. Identify All Infringements: Provide an accounting of all instances where Seedance has generated content based on prompts related to Netflix’s IP.
4. Revoke Third-Party Access: Revoke access for any commercial partners or API users currently utilizing Seedance to generate unauthorized Netflix derivative works.
Netflix will not stand by and watch ByteDance treat our valued IP as free, public domain clip art. We await your response within three (3) business days. All rights and remedies are reserved.
Regards,
Mindy LeMoine, Director, Litigation
Cover via Nin19536/X.com
