Sony Music Fires Off Supersized Infringement Lawsuit Against Udio

Sony Music head Rob Stringer. Photo Credit: Sony Music

Weeks after a federal court rejected Sony Music’s request to supersize its Udio copyright lawsuit, the major label has responded by firing off a fresh complaint alleging the infringement of over 30,000 recordings.

Sony Music made that follow-up action official today, after Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein closed out June by rejecting a request to file an amended suit. In his decision, the judge indicated that adding tens of thousands of works would “considerably prolong the proceedings.”

But as the major label reiterated, Judge Hellerstein also acknowledged its “right to seek to stop infringement of, and recover damages for, all copyrighted works” – while explaining that “there is no requirement that it be done in this lawsuit.”

Enter the new complaint, which resembles the 2024 action but covers more angles and allegedly infringed works.

On the angles side, the expanded suit makes good use of the ongoing first case’s discovery (during which the plaintiffs identified the allegedly infringed works); Udio’s answers; and the AI platform’s licensing deals.

“Tellingly, even as it litigates the Original Action, Udio has reversed course in the marketplace,” a relevant section reads. “Since launching its service, Udio has entered into licensing agreements with various rightsholders to use sound recordings as training data for generative AI models.

“Those agreements confirm both that a functioning market exists for licensing sound recordings for use in connection with generative AI, including to train generative AI models, and that Udio recognizes that using copyrighted sound recordings for this purpose requires permission,” the text continues.

Meanwhile, Sony Music has doubled down on its all-important fair use arguments – including because it believes Udio’s “use here is far from transformative” in that the platform allegedly aims “to spit out new, competing audio files.”

That said, the plaintiffs (a number of Sony Music subsidiaries) aren’t putting all their eggs in the fair use basket. Udio’s alleged stream ripping, referring to its alleged violation of the DMCA when allegedly lifting protected audio from YouTube and elsewhere for training, is also front and center this time around.

“In any event, fair use is not a defense for violation of the Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention clause,” the suit maintains.

As for the complaint’s bigger-picture significance, it remains to be seen how the ongoing cases will interplay moving forward. Of course, from Udio’s existing licensing deals to the unprecedented nature of the technology in question, the situation isn’t light on unique details.

To be sure, Udio is now in the curious position of simultaneously fending off high-stakes complaints from one of today’s largest music companies and preparing to launch a new product in partnership with Merlin, Warner Music, and Universal Music.

Is the strategy designed to dissuade other would-be AI upstarts from employing a similar training approach and then seeking licenses after the fact? Adjacent to the possibility, it probably doesn’t need saying that a definitive win against Udio would prove useful in the current legal battles against Suno (and perhaps different gen AI platforms yet down the line).

As Sony Music and Universal Music (but not Warner Music) are still litigating against Suno, this leads to even more interesting questions: Is the industry delaying the inevitable and setting itself back by resisting gen AI? What happens to the licensing landscape if AI giants’ fair use arguments prevail? And with just one major backing Suno, are we watching a reboot of a show that aired a quarter of a century ago?

Time will tell. At present, it seems quite safe to say that it’s all systems go for Sony Music’s infringement allegations against Udio, which will see its forthcoming service compete with the fully licensed Klay Vision and Spotify’s AI products, to name a couple.