Suno Moves to Dismiss Jason Isbell’s Class Action Lawsuit

Suno moves to dismiss a right-of-publicity case filed by a group of performers, including Jason Isbell and David Lowery, claiming that none of its outputs could be mistaken for those musicians.

Suno has filed a motion to dismiss the U.S. privacy and publicity rights claims filed by musicians Jason Isbell and David Lowery, claiming that none of its outputs could be mistaken for any of the musicians in the lawsuit. The class action was initiated by Isbell on behalf of himself and other artists in the area of name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights, accusing Suno of violating those rights by allowing users to extract and replicate musicians’ identities via prompts.

Now, Suno claims that the company’s actions are completely lawful and that it is a First Amendment issue.

“When people describe styles of music, they often use artists’ names as shorthand for the genre they perform in. This case turns on the premise that the law somehow condemns that universal practice. In reality, it does not; the First Amendment would not allow it to,” the filing reads.

“No state confers a right of publicity that prohibits a musician in a studio from saying to their producer, ‘Let’s go for something here with more of a Jason Isbell vibe,’ and actually achieving that result without infringing any copyright or creating a likelihood of confusion over the identity of the performer.”

Additionally, Suno has summed up the broader legal issue with state publicity rights overlapping federal copyright standards: “Congress made the considered policy choice not to confer intellectual property protection on an artistic style, precisely to allow subsequent creators to build on the prior works of a genre.”

In essence, Suno posits that using an artist’s name in a prompt or for reference is simply “universal shorthand” for describing a genre or musical style and fully protected under the First Amendment—and therefore entirely legal.

Further, Suno argues that U.S. copyright law doesn’t cover general styles of music and genres, and honoring state-level right-of-publicity laws on the matter would be in direct conflict.

Notably, despite what Suno claims, its platform blocks direct artist name prompts by translating them into descriptive style tags. For example, “Pantera” might become “aggressive metal.” But Isbell and Lowery’s lawsuit argues that the system is easily bypassed by users to rip off a specific artist’s style.