Reservoir sues Suno and Anthropic over training data
Confirmed
The takeaway
On Oct 21, 2026 Reservoir Media filed two suits in the Northern District of California: against Suno over 1,050 compositions it says were copied to train music models, and against Anthropic over the lyrics of 853 compositions it says were used to train Claude.
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- 3 of 5
- Last verified
- 22 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra174 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5113 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Argon204 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7143 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 113 days before it.
Key facts
- Filed Oct 21, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California; plaintiffs Reservoir Media Management, Inc., Reservoir Media Management (UK) Limited and Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Limited; counsel Richard S. Busch (Adams & Reese) with Skaggs Faucette LLP
- Suno case: 1,050 compositions, including Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’, Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ and Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’; Reservoir says Suno ‘built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before’
- Suno scraping allegation: use of Bright Data proxies to scrape YouTube Music, Deezer and Genius, based on hacked source code reported by 404 Media; Suno called it ‘outdated source code that is no longer in use’
- Suno relief: actual damages and profits, or statutory damages up to $150,000 per wilfully infringed work ($157.5M pleaded); two DMCA counts bring the three-count total above $186M; injunction and destruction of unauthorised copies including model weights
- Anthropic case: lyrics of 853 compositions, including Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Lush Life’ and Evanescence’s ‘Bring Me to Life’; alleges Claude was trained on them and generates copies and derivative works
- Anthropic relief: statutory damages of $127.95M, three-count total just above $151.4M, plus injunction and destruction of copies
- Context: the same week, Anthropic and music publishers argued fair use in the existing lyrics case (Reuters headline, Oct 21), Suno told the court it has not deleted all recordings used for training (MBW, Oct 22), and a tracker counted eight new AI copyright suits in one week
What happened
Reservoir, an independent publisher with a large back catalogue, split its claims: a music-generation case against Suno and a lyrics case against Anthropic. Both complaints ask the court to order destruction of infringing copies “including copies retained in model weights”, the remedy labs most resist. Billboard’s headline quote from the filings is that the systems were “meant to replace the artists”. Only Music Business Worldwide’s account was readable in full (Billboard via search snippets).
Why it matters
It adds a second publisher front against Anthropic weeks before its IPO, and it keeps pressing the weight-destruction remedy, which would be far more costly than damages. Together with the eight AI copyright suits filed in the same week it marks an acceleration of music-industry litigation.
Sources
2 sources from 2 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
2 sources: 2 press
Press
- Music Business Worldwide: Reservoir sues Suno and Anthropic for infringing songs by Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash, Madonna and moremusicbusinessworldwide.com, press
- Billboard: Reservoir sues Suno & Anthropic in latest lawsuits over AI musicbillboard.com, press
Changes
- Filed