Independent music publisher Round Hill Music has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against artificial intelligence (AI) companies Suno and Anthropic, alleging they used hundreds of its songs without permission to train AI models.
The complaints claim the defendants reproduced Round Hill-owned or managed musical works on their servers in violation of the Copyright Act. They also allege the companies used data scraping software to bypass security measures and copyright protections in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Alleged infringement and damages
Round Hill submitted a list of 500 songs the defendants allegedly infringed, including:
- “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls
- “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler, written by Jim Steinman
- “I Got You (I Feel Good)” by James Brown
The publisher said it plans to amend the list to potentially ten thousand or more musical compositions, with damages potentially exceeding $1 billion.
Catalog and existing legal exposure
Round Hill manages more than 150 catalogs and over 200,000 songs. Its catalog includes works performed by:
- George Harrison
- Elvis Presley
- Bruno Mars
- Chaka Khan
- Morgan Wallen
- Madonna
- Black Sabbath
- The Killers
Suno is currently facing a separate copyright suit from Universal Music Group and Sony Music Group. It settled with Warner Music Group late last year.
Anthropic faces suits from Universal Music Publishing, Abcko, Concord and BMG over alleged unauthorized use of song lyrics to train its AI agent, Claude.
Round Hill’s position
Josh Gruss, CEO and founder of Round Hill Music, said:
“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.”
