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15 months later, Sony Music Entertainment (SME) and Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW) have formally moved to end their copyright infringement showdown. However, the footwear retailer is still fending off a complaint from Warner Music Group (WMG).
DSW parent Designer Brands and Sony Music made that dismissal official in a concise notice today, after kicking off their legal battle back in August 2025. As we broke down then, SME accused DSW of infringing on a number of its recordings in social media promo videos.
Those clips included uploads to the company’s TikTok and Instagram pages as well as commissioned posts on influencers’ accounts. In a nutshell – and as many are aware due to the industry’s long list of social infringement actions – platforms’ licensed song libraries are cleared for personal, not commercial, use.
Nevertheless, more than a few brands have allegedly complemented their videos with tracks that aren’t featured in social services’ commercial music libraries. And in doing so, they’ve set the stage for all manner of infringement cases.
To be sure, DSW found itself fending off copyright litigation in May 2025, when WMG accused it of infringing on hundreds of recordings and compositions.
In July of the same year, DSW fired back with a suit of its own, seeking a judgment declaring that it hadn’t infringed on the copyrights of Sony Music, Universal Music, and BMG, which were likewise pointing to allegedly unauthorized usages.
“The DBI (Designer Brands Inc.) Entities will not permit the Labels to bully them, abuse copyright law, and cast a shadow over their businesses with baseless threats of copyright infringement,” DSW spelled out.
Sony Music proceeded to sue in August 2025 “to stop DSW’s rampant infringement of SME’s copyrighted sound recordings,” and nearly three months back, we covered the litigants’ settlement in principle.
Put differently, there’s quite a lot happening in the social media infringement arena generally and in the DSW cases specifically.
But as of today, the multifaceted situation is a bit less complex: Sony Music and DSW jointly moved to dismiss their suit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
While they opted against disclosing the terms at hand, we should be able to spot any once-off settlement-related expenses in the forthcoming earnings reports of Designer Brands (NYSE: DBI).
Closer to the present, the defendant is also in talks to put other disagreements in the rearview, per a recent filing in its declaratory judgment action.
“The Parties have a near-final copy of an agreement resolving the dispute between Plaintiffs and the Defendants associated with BMG Rights Management (US) LLC and Universal Music Group that they expect to execute this week,” counsel for both sides indicated.
“The Parties are diligently working on an agreement resolving the dispute between Plaintiffs and the Defendants associated with Sony Music Publishing,” with notification “of a deadline for dismissal of all remaining claims” expected “prior to the next reporting deadline of Wednesday, November 28, 2026,” they continued.
Back to Warner Music’s DSW suit, the litigants evidently have yet to put their clash to rest. Yesterday, the defendant formally opposed the major’s motion to file a second amended complaint that would seemingly allege infringement across another 70 or so influencer posts.
Because the overhauled action “fundamentally changes the scope of the case,” the motion should be denied, DSW argued in its detail-oriented filing.