Reservoir Media has sued Suno and Anthropic, alleging they used copyrighted music to train artificial intelligence (AI) models without permission.
The separate lawsuits, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, seek damages, injunctions and the impoundment or destruction of unauthorized copies.
Claims against Suno
Reservoir alleges that Suno copied 1,050 compositions to train its AI models. It says it owns outright or exclusively controls the US copyrights to those works.
The compositions identified in the complaint include:
- Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”
- Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”
- Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach”
- Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life”
Reservoir seeks actual damages and Suno’s profits or, alternatively, statutory damages of up to US$157.5 million.
Two further claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) seek an additional US$26.875 million.
The requested injunction and impoundment or destruction of unauthorized copies extend to copies held in training datasets and server infrastructure.
Claims against Anthropic
Reservoir alleges that Anthropic used lyrics from 853 compositions without permission to train its Claude models. It also alleges that Claude produces copies or derivative works when prompted.
The Anthropic complaint identifies the following songs among the works at issue:
- Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Both Sides Now”
- Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach”
- Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life”
- Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life”
Reservoir seeks actual damages and Anthropic’s profits or, alternatively, statutory damages of up to US$127.95 million, plus $23.46 million across two additional DMCA claims.
The Anthropic lawsuit also requests an injunction and the impoundment or destruction of unauthorized copies of Reservoir’s works.
