Round Hill Music has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Suno and Anthropic, alleging the AI companies used its musical works to train their models without authorisation, licence or compensation.
Founded in 2010, the US-based private equity platform manages a $1.1 billion (£810 million) portfolio of music rights.
The suits accuse the defendants of unauthorised use of hundreds of musical works owned or managed by Round Hill, including Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, Total Eclipse Of The Heart by Bonnie Tyler and I Got You (I Feel Good) by James Brown.
Among the claims filed, the suits allege that the defendants reproduced Round Hill's intellectual property on their servers in violation of the Copyright Act, and used data scraping software to bypass security measures and copyright protections in violation of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).
The Suno suit additionally names data-scraping firm Bright Data as a co-defendant, accused of supplying the tools used to circumvent access controls on licensed platforms and extract copyrighted material for AI training.
"We are privileged to act as stewards of some of the greatest musical works of our time, and we answer to the writers and artists who created them," said Round Hill CEO and founder Josh Gruss (pictured). "We are not against artificial intelligence. We are against the idea that you can build a business worth billions on top of other people's creative work and pay the creators nothing. Licensing isn't an obstacle to innovation – it is there to protect the legal owners of the raw material, their property.
"As an independent music company, we have the freedom and obligation to say that plainly and to act on it. We intend to take these cases to trial and to hold these companies accountable, and we will not accept a resolution that leaves songwriters and artists deprived of their rightful share of compensation."
Copyrighted works have been used to build multi-billion dollar businesses... while the songwriters and publishers who created the foundations of that value have received nothing
Richard S Busch, Adams and Reese LLP
The lawsuits were filed on Monday (August 17) in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
Round Hill is being represented by Richard S Busch of Adams and Reese LLP, who previously secured a landmark victory with the Blurred Lines case for the family of Marvin Gaye.
"The question in these cases is not complicated," said Busch. "Copyrighted works have been used to build multi-billion dollar businesses, and in the case of Anthropic a company now valued at more than a trillion dollars, while the songwriters and publishers who created the foundations of that value have received nothing. There is nothing fair about that use, and we look forward to making our arguments to the court and in front of a jury."
Suno and Anthropic are yet to publicly comment on the lawsuits.
The development comes days after BMG and Suno announced a global alliance covering BMG’s recorded music and publishing repertoire.
According to the companies, the deal ensures that BMG artists and songwriters who choose to participate will have their rights protected and be compensated for their music, while also settling prior use of BMG recordings and publishing works.
BMG became the latest significant player to strike a deal with Suno following Warner Music Group's licensing agreement with the company last November.
Last month meanwhile, Suno was also hit with a copyright infringement ruling in Germany following legal action by GEMA.
Suno still faces legal action in the US from major music companies including Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.
Separately, Anthropic also faces lawsuits from Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO, as well as [BMG Rights Management](link if you have a MusicWeek story on the BMG Anthropic suit), over similar allegations of unauthorised use of song lyrics to train Claude.
