Disney has been accused of attempting to claim media ownership of the popular hashtag "MayThe4th" on Twitter.
The company's streaming service, Disney Plus, encouraged fans to share their favorite Star Wars memories using the hashtag Monday.
A legal warning followed, suggesting that any user who tweeted the hashtag accept Disney's terms and let them use their content.
He came back after a huge fan protest and widespread hoax.
The hashtag - a word game on the franchise's phrase, "May the force be with you", has been used for years in conjunction with the invented fan party.
"Reply with your favorite memory of #Star Wars and you may see it in a special # MayThe4th place," the company said in a tweet.
"By sharing your message with us during # MayThe4th, you accept our use of the message and your account name in all media and our terms of use."
Many fans were quick to share their confusion on Disney's tweet.
"You can't just scream an agreement on terms of service in a vacuum and then assume that anyone doing something that doesn't line up has seen and accepted it," replied a user.
Another user joked: "By having my tweet in your thread, you hereby waive all your public domain copyright."
Disney later added that the wording only applied to specific tweets in the original thread.
"The legal language above applies ONLY to responses to this tweet using # MayThe4th and mentioning @DisneyPlus. These responses may appear in something special on May 4th!"
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Aaron Wood, an intellectual property attorney at Keystone Law, said that due to the popularity of the hashtag, Disney's tweet was unlikely to have been seen by anyone who used it.
"It is a little risky and presumptuous that all tweets copying them with the hashtag have read their terms or are aware of them," he told the BBC.
Twitter policy states that users own the unique content they publish on the social media service.
"A user can authorize someone else to use his tweet," added Wood. "However, the risk of Disney is if users who simply use the hashtag are actually granting them that permission."
