Justice v. Suno, Inc.

District court grants in part and denies in part motion to dismiss claims brought by independent recording artists against generative AI company, finding that plaintiffs plausibly pled their claims for violation of Copyright Act and violation of DMCA but failed to address deficiencies in their claim under Tennessee consumer protection statute. 

Plaintiffs, independent recording artists or entities owned by independent recording artists that hold copyrights to songs and recordings, brought suit against Suno, Inc., a generative AI company, asserting four claims—(1) violation of 17 U.S.C. § 106(1) of the Copyright Act (infringement based on derivative works); (2) violation of 17 U.S.C. § 106(2) of the Copyright Act (direct copyright infringement); (3) violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (circumventing access controls); and (4) violation of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The claims were premised on allegations that Suno improperly downloaded plaintiffs’ copyrighted songs from YouTube, copied the songs to train its AI model and generated AI music that is the same as or substantially similar to the protected expressive elements of plaintiffs’ copyrighted songs.

On Suno’s motion to dismiss the second, third and fourth causes of action, the court dismissed only the claim under Tennessee law and allowed the federal Copyright Act and DMCA claims to go forward.

In support of their claim for violation of 17 U.S.C. § 106(2), plaintiffs alleged that Suno used and/or accessed streaming services to which plaintiffs had licensed their songs to illegally copy and reproduce the songs to train its AI model. Plaintiffs also alleged that some Suno-generated outputs are verbatim or near verbatim reproductions of plaintiffs’ songs and that evidence exists that Suno’s AI models have generated exact or nearly exact versions of plaintiffs’ copyrighted songs. Plaintiffs provided around 100 examples of Suno outputs that either directly replicate or substantially resemble songs owned by other copyright holders. In its motion to dismiss, Suno argued that plaintiffs did not plausibly plead the substantially similar prong of copyright infringement. In particular, Suno argued that plaintiffs did not—and were required to—plausibly plead the existence of Suno outputs that are substantially similar to plaintiffs’ copyrighted songs. The court disagreed, explaining that “there is no categorical requirement that plaintiff[s] must produce the derivative work at the motion to dismiss stage” and that all plaintiffs must do is plausibly plead the existence of a substantially similar work. The court found that plaintiffs had done so, even though they did not specifically identify outputs that are substantially similar to their copyrighted songs, because they alleged that Suno structured its AI model to generate AI music designed to mirror the songs it trains on, provided 100 specific examples of Suno outputs that closely imitate or replicate specific existing songs or artist identifiers, and provided comments by Suno’s CEO that Suno’s AI model has the ability to produce outputs that replicate real artists’ vocals and songs.

In support of their claim that Suno violated the DMCA by circumventing a technological measure that controls access to a copyrighted work, plaintiffs alleged that YouTube employs a “rolling cipher” technical measure that is designed to impede external access to its videos and that Suno used a “stream-ripping” tool to circumvent YouTube’s cipher and download plaintiffs’ songs to train its AI model. In its motion, Suno argued that these allegations were insufficient to plead “access control” within the meaning of the statute. The court once again disagreed. The court adopted the reasoning from UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Suno, Inc., a decision from the District of Massachusetts in which the court found that allegations that Suno circumvented YouTube’s rolling cipher to access copyrighted recordings plausibly stated a claim under the statute, and denied defendant’s motion to dismiss as to this claim.

With respect to plaintiffs’ TCPA claim, Suno argued that the state law claim was preempted by federal copyright law and plaintiffs failed to meet the heightened pleading standard. In response, plaintiffs did not address those grounds for dismissal but instead contended that invoking the TCPA was a mistake and that they meant to assert a common law claim for unfair competition and sought to amend their complaint. Noting that an opposition to a motion to dismiss is not the proper mechanism by which plaintiffs could amend the complaint, the court concluded that plaintiffs had waived any objection to the dismissal of the TCPA claim and granted the motion to dismiss this count of the complaint.

Summary prepared by Todd Densen and Jennifer Kahn