Photo Credit: Mina Rad
Suno and Warner Music Group (WMG) really don’t want to reveal the terms of their lawsuit-ending licensing agreement: Now, the AI music generator is aggressively firing back against a demand from Universal Music and Sony Music to produce the deal.
We initially covered that demand late last month, not long after Universal Music and Sony Music moved to obtain the Warner Music-Suno contract via discovery. As most are already aware, besides setting the stage for WMG to bow out of the litigation, the pact kicked off a high-profile partnership between the companies.
Thus far, one licensing embrace hasn’t turned into three; both Sony Music and Universal Music Group (UMG) are still suing Suno and appear far from settling. (Sony Music is also plowing ahead with its suit against Udio, which settled with and licensed WMG as well as UMG.)
Against this backdrop, after the magistrate judge rejected the contract ask during a March conference, the non-Warner majors submitted a 20-page objection, DMN reported.
(Per Judge Paul Levenson, “the relevance of this information is marginal and the potential for chilling settlements—in this and other cases—is high.”)
Then, earlier in May, the parties participated in another status conference that aimed to resolve “outstanding discovery disputes” but seemingly failed to deliver progress on the contract matter.
(Actually, this particular contract matter didn’t appear to come up. Instead, the parties attempted to resolve discovery disagreements concerning the scope of UMG execs’ testimonies as well as anti-steering and -dilution provisions in DSP licensing agreements. On the testimonies front, earnings-call statements about UMG’s resilience in the face of an AI audio avalanche are looming large.)
To be sure, Suno in a motion promptly moved to address what it described as “numerous mischaracterizations of Judge Levenson’s order.”
“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 wrote.
Meanwhile, as we previously noted, the case’s marathon discovery process has brought hurdles for each side; in Suno attorneys’ own words, “both parties have won, lost, been sent back to the negotiating table, and accepted compromises on multiple issues.”
But the way the funding-heavy AI developer sees things, the non-Warner majors’ contract challenge represents a departure from the norm and an attempt to relitigate an already-resolved issue.
“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,” Suno summed up.
Next, the defendant criticized as “fundamentally misguided” the non-Warner majors’ alleged attempt to separate the Suno-WMG settlement from the licensing deal itself.
In a nutshell, “the partnership arose from and thus is inextricably intertwined with Warner’s settlement of its claims against Suno in this case,” per the Songkick owner.
What about the central allegation that the WMG-Suno pact proves there is, in fact, a market for licensing protected music for gen AI training?
“That Suno entered a global settlement with one rightsholder 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,” Suno proceeded.
With that, all eyes are on the magistrate judge’s determination in the high-stakes discovery sub-dispute. Worth reiterating in conclusion is the counsel overlap in the majors’ Suno and Udio legal battles; the same Latham & Watkins attorney who penned the discovery disagreement response for Suno also wrapped April by signing off on Udio’s answer to Sony Music’s amended suit.
