Canada’s Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers (SOCAN) has filed a copyright lawsuit against AI music company Suno in Canada’s Federal Court, alleging unauthorized use of member works including Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi”.
The filing came shortly after activist artist David Lowery and Latin label Gerencia 360 filed separate actions against Suno in the United States. In late July, Germany’s GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte) secured a copyright legal victory over Suno in Germany; Suno is appealing.
Complaint allegations#
Suno “acted in bad faith by helping itself to a massive number of SOCAN Works” and “without first seeking or obtaining a license to do so,” according to the complaint. SOCAN alleges that this enabled Suno to train its models, build a large user base partly by producing “identical or substantially similar” outputs, and “build a commercial enterprise that is now worth billions of dollars.”
Suno’s user-prompt guardrails are “woefully inadequate,” SOCAN said, and the safeguards show that Suno knows “of the infringing nature of its business model.” The complaint includes links to outputs that remained available to stream on Suno at the time of filing.
SOCAN described the cited outputs as “the tip of the iceberg” of infringement and is seeking damages for Suno’s “knowing, high-handed, willful, and malicious disregard for” the performing rights in question.
Damages sought#
- CA$10 million in punitive and exemplary damages
- A share of profits from the alleged infringement, or statutory damages of CA$20,000 per allegedly infringed work
Related litigation#
The cases share core allegations.
In the past month, Suno has resolved a couple of copyright cases and reached a licensing agreement with BMG and Concord, avoiding a confrontation with those companies.
