Suno opposes disclosure of Warner Music deal in AI copyright case

The dispute forms part of wider legal action brought by major record companies against Suno over allegations that the AI platform used copyrighted recordings to train its music-generation technology without authorisation.

Warner Music Group settled its claims against Suno earlier this year and entered into a licensing and partnership agreement with the company. However, Universal Music Group and Sony Music have continued their legal proceedings against Suno, while Sony Music is also pursuing a separate case against AI music platform Udio.

Universal Music and Sony Music sought access to the Warner-Suno agreement during the discovery phase of the litigation. Their request was rejected during a March conference by Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson, who stated that “the relevance of this information is marginal and the potential for chilling settlements, in this and other cases, is high”.

Following that decision, the two music companies submitted an objection seeking reconsideration of the ruling.

Earlier this month, the parties attended another status conference intended to resolve outstanding discovery disputes, although no agreement was reached regarding disclosure of the Warner-Suno deal.

In a subsequent filing, Suno accused the plaintiffs of misrepresenting Judge Levenson’s earlier ruling.

“Taken at face value, the order makes clear that Judge Levenson properly considered the proportional burden of producing a highly sensitive commercial agreement settling the claims between Suno and a former plaintiff that has marginal relevance to Plaintiffs’ litigation positions and that is unlikely to be admissible,” Suno stated in its motion.

The company said discovery disputes had affected both sides throughout the case, noting that “both parties have won, lost, been sent back to the negotiating table, and accepted compromises on multiple issues”.

However, Suno argued that the latest request by Universal Music and Sony Music amounted to an attempt to revisit an issue that had already been resolved by the court.

“While Suno has accepted Judge Levenson’s adverse rulings and given due deference to his discretion in managing discovery in a highly complex case, faced with a decision they do not agree with, Plaintiffs now seek to relitigate an issue already appropriately resolved by Judge Levenson,” the company said.

Suno also rejected arguments that its settlement with Warner Music could be separated from the broader licensing partnership between the companies, describing such claims as “fundamentally misguided”.

According to Suno, “the partnership arose from and thus is inextricably intertwined with Warner’s settlement of its claims against Suno in this case”.

The AI company further disputed claims that the Warner agreement demonstrated the existence of a viable licensing market for copyrighted music used in generative AI training.

“That Suno entered a global settlement with one rights-holder after many months of hard-fought litigation, does not show whether a licensing market exists or whether Suno could license a sufficient training corpus to build the state-of-the-art generative AI model it offers,” the filing stated.

The court is expected to rule on whether the Warner-Suno agreement must be disclosed as part of the discovery process.