Round Hill Sues Anthropic and Suno Over AI Training on Its Songs

Round Hill Music has opened separate copyright cases against Anthropic and Suno, alleging the companies used its songs and lyrics without permission to train AI systems. The suits begin with about 500 works, but Round Hill says they could grow to 10,000 or more compositions and carry a conditional damages estimate above $1 billion.

Round Hill filed the lawsuits on Aug. 17 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. They target Claude, Anthropic’s chatbot, and Suno’s AI music-generation system. The publisher’s named catalog includes “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler and James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good).”

• Against Anthropic, Round Hill alleges that lyrics from at least 500 songs it controls were used to train Claude.
• Against Suno, Round Hill alleges use of the same songs to train its music-generation system.
• The complaints allege that the companies copied and stored protected works without licenses or compensation. The Suno case also names Bright Data as a co-defendant, alleging that it supplied tools used to collect copyrighted material from licensed platforms.

Round Hill also alleges violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, saying data-scraping technology bypassed copyright protections. That makes the dispute about more than the alleged presence of songs in training data: the complaints also challenge the claimed collection and storage of those works. These are allegations in newly filed civil cases, not court findings.

The numbers describe Round Hill’s intended scope and its own conditional damages estimate. They do not establish infringement, fix the eventual number of works at issue or represent a damages award. The publisher could seek to amend its cases, but a court would still have to decide the claims and any remedy.

The cases land in a wider unresolved fight over training data. AI training uses existing works to teach models how to generate new material. Copyright owners have argued that using protected work in that process requires permission or payment; AI companies have argued in comparable cases that transforming the material for training can qualify as fair use, a legal doctrine that permits some unauthorized uses.

That argument has high stakes for this suit, but it does not answer Round Hill’s specific claims about its catalog, alleged copying or alleged scraping. A ruling here would have to apply copyright law to the particular conduct and works alleged in these complaints.

Suno is already defending a 2024 lawsuit brought by Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment over similar training allegations. Warner later settled and licensed its catalog to Suno, while Universal and Sony continued litigating, according to Billboard. Anthropic has also faced multiple lawsuits alleging that it used song lyrics and other copyrighted material in AI training.

Round Hill CEO Josh Gruss said the publisher supports technological innovation but opposes using copyrighted works to build AI businesses without compensating creators. He said Round Hill intends to take these cases to trial and would not accept a resolution that leaves songwriters and artists without their rightful share of compensation. The next procedural steps will show how Anthropic, Suno and Bright Data answer the allegations, and whether Round Hill’s stated trial posture holds.