Reservoir Media has become the latest rights holder to take generative AI companies to court. The Nasdaq-listed independent music company filed two separate federal lawsuits on Wednesday, October 21, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California: one against AI music generator Suno and another against Anthropic, the developer of the Claude models.
Both complaints rest on the same core argument: that the companies copied Reservoir-controlled songs without a license to train their systems, and that each one built its business on infringement. Titles cited in the filings include Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” and Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life.”
Two cases, two sets of works
- Suno: Reservoir lists 1,050 compositions whose U.S. copyrights it says it fully owns or exclusively controls. It also brings claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act over alleged circumvention of access controls and removal of copyright management information. Together, the totals pleaded across the three counts come to just over $186 million.
- Anthropic: This complaint covers the lyrics of 853 compositions, which Reservoir says were used to train Claude and can be reproduced in the chatbot’s answers. The amounts pleaded total roughly $151.4 million.
In both cases, Reservoir is asking for damages, an injunction and the destruction of unauthorized copies, including any held in training datasets and model weights. The Suno filing describes that company’s approach as copying first and trying to settle cheaply later, and it points to Suno’s licensing deals with Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe as proof that a market for licensing training data already exists.
The publisher is represented by Richard Busch of Adams & Reese, the lawyer who won the “Blurred Lines” case for Marvin Gaye’s family. His team has already filed similar suits against Suno for Round Hill Music and Gerencia 360.
Reservoir founder and CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi said the company backs technological progress but will hold AI platforms accountable when it believes its writers’ and artists’ work has been used without authorization. An Anthropic spokesperson told Billboard the company disagrees with the allegations and plans to defend itself vigorously. Suno declined to comment.
Both companies already face other music cases. Universal Music Group and Sony Music are still suing Suno, and Anthropic is defending lawsuits from several major publishers in the same court.
Image: Lyanne Natividad / Billboard, via https://www.billboard.com/pro/reservoir-sues-suno-anthropic-over-ai-training/.
Source: Billboard