Photo Credit: Planet Volumes
Reservoir Media has supersized its Suno and Anthropic copyright infringement complaints, which are now demanding a combined total of nearly $450 million in statutory damages.
New York City-headquartered Reservoir fired off the expanded actions yesterday, weeks after submitting the original complaints. As we broke down in detail then, the publisher is seeking a massive pile of damages for Suno’s alleged training-related infringement and DMCA violations as well as allegedly infringing outputs.
Admittedly, as Suno is grappling with a number of copyright suits, Reservoir’s claims didn’t come as a surprise. However, amid at least a dozen heated legal battles, the newest complaints against the AI upstart are capitalizing on a growing list of developments, disclosures, and revelations.
Just in passing, these include but aren’t limited to searchable training datasets and GEMA’s win over Suno in Germany. More recent actions are also zeroing in on allegedly infringing outputs – referring to Claude’s alleged “verbatim or near-verbatim reproduction of lyrics” and Suno’s alleged derivative-work generations.
Back to Reservoir’s updated Suno suit, the company is pointing to 1,368 (up from 1,050) allegedly infringed works, created by the likes of Dion, Joni Mitchell, Joe Walsh, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Travis Tritt, and many others, for maximum statutory damages of $205.2 million.
And in the Anthropic action, the figure has jumped to 1,143 (up from 853) allegedly infringed works for total statutory damages of $171.5 million. Meanwhile, with the DMCA damages tally having likewise increased due to the new works, the initially mentioned sought statutory relief has topped $445 million.
That is, of course, a sizable sum, and there’s a lot on the line for both defendants. But to emphasize the obvious, the stakes are particularly high for Suno, which is being sued by Universal Music, Sony Music, indie artists, Gerencia 360, Eight Mile Style, Elvis Presley Enterprises, the aforementioned GEMA, SOCAN, KODA, artists including David Lowery, and Round Hill.
Time will tell whether Suno, which does have user and revenue momentum as well as partnership pacts with Warner Music, BMG, and Believe, can overcome the litigation avalanche.
But far from throwing in the towel, the company is letting the subpoenas fly and, as exclusively reported by DMN earlier this week, questioning whether the majors even possess the contractual authority to license their catalogs for training.
Counsel for the litigating majors (meaning Universal Music and Sony Music) promptly attempted to refute the claim. However, as a substantial portion of the involved contracts arrived well before the AI boom – and as artists themselves have the option of participating in AI tie-ups but certainly aren’t required to do so – the little-discussed position is worth keeping in mind as the no-holds-barred dispute unfolds.