Federal Judge Dismisses Newer Epidemic v. Meta Copyright Case

Photo Credit: Claudio Schwarz

After years of back-and-forth litigation, a federal judge has officially ruled on dueling summary judgment motions – and dismissed one complaint altogether – in the ugly Epidemic Sound v. Meta showdown.

Technically, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley resolved the summary judgment questions closer to June’s end. But with both sides having had until last Friday to request redactions, the corresponding order, clocking in at a cool 115 pages, just hit the docket today.

Meanwhile, this past Friday also saw the court dismiss the newer suit without prejudice. We’ve been covering the overarching legal battle, complete with no shortage of twists and moving parts, since it kicked off in 2022.

(The convoluted cases don’t solely involve post-2022 developments, either; the litigants initiated licensing talks in 2016, and years-old communications are factoring into the actions as well.)

Behind the marathon legal process, prolonged by discovery disputes, a trial delay ahead of the Supreme Court’s Cox v. Sony decision, and different factors, Epidemic’s core allegations are straightforward enough.

In the related complaints, the newer of which having materialized in December 2025, the royalty-free music platform is accusing the social media giant of infringing on a sizable number of recordings and compositions. And as we previously broke down in greater detail, this includes alleged infringement across Instagram Reels’ “original audio” and Remix videos.

Beginning with the second suit, Judge Corley tossed the action without prejudice because Epidemic failed to demonstrate that “any of its 1,000 asserted works are substantially similar to any allegedly infringing work.”

“So, even drawing inferences in Epidemic’s favor,” the court penned, “Epidemic has not alleged any facts supporting a plausible inference each of Epidemic’s 1,000 asserted Works are—under the extrinsic test—substantially similar to an allegedly infringing work on Meta’s platform. And without plausibly alleging substantial similarity, Epidemic cannot state a claim for copyright.”

With that, Epidemic has until August 14th to file an amended complaint illustrating “substantial similarity” between the works. Shifting to Judge Corley’s decision in the older case – replete, as mentioned, with dueling summary judgment motions – each party scored victories.

Unsurprisingly, exploring every component of the order would require a substantial amount of space and ink. But in terms of key takeaways, the court determined that “there is no genuine factual dispute Epidemic owns valid copyrights” in 869 works for which it presented registration certificates.

Needless to say, this is a major positive in an infringement complaint – especially because Meta had taken issue with alleged “flaws” in the registrations and called into question their validity.

That Epidemic Sound deals in volume and reportedly commissions musicians to make tracks before assuming complete ownership is relevant in the sub-dispute. So is the fact that the Stockholm-based plaintiff, founded in 2009, only moved to copyright the works in 2021 – or soon after learning of Meta’s alleged infringement.

Running with the point, some will recall that alleged problems concerning “deposit copies” – referring to the actual works provided to the Copyright Office in connection with its applications – have been dogging Epidemic for a while now.

In brief, Meta took aim at Epidemic’s alleged inability to demonstrate substantial similarities between the deposit copies and the appropriate on-platform audio. Then Epidemic introduced “litigation-produced tracks” that are said to be “substantially similar” to the deposit copies; Meta seized on the fact as well as the resulting alleged lack of copyright protection.

“Ultimately, to avoid summary judgment in Meta’s favor, Epidemic must present evidence from which a reasonable trier of fact could find its Deposited Tracks are substantially similar to Meta’s corresponding Infringing Works,” Judge Corley wrote.

“Given the evidence of substantial similarity between the Litigation-Produced Tracks and Meta’s Infringing Works, Epidemic need only present evidence from which a reasonable trier of fact could find the Litigation-Produced Tracks are identical to the Deposited Tracks,” she continued.

And with comments from Epidemic licensing exec Caroline Ekström having come up short from the perspective of demonstrating substantial similarity, the plaintiff managed to avoid a summary judgment loss thanks to its ISRC and title overlaps.

“Ultimately, if Epidemic uses titles and ISRCs as unique identifiers for each Litigation-Produced Track, a reasonable trier of fact could also find because the corresponding Deposited Track shares a title and ISRC with the Litigation-Produced Track, the Deposited Track and the Litigation Produced Track are identical,” the court found.

Even so, Meta achieved the desired outcome with regard to 31 tracks for which Epidemic didn’t “present evidence of copyright registrations, Litigation-Produced Tracks, or corresponding titles and ISRCs.”

Finally, following Cox v. Sony, it probably won’t prove a shock that Epidemic whiffed on the contributory infringement side. In brief, the defendant didn’t induce infringement or tailor its platforms to support infringement, according to the court.

And when it comes to statutory damages, “the summary judgment record compels the finding 894 of 900 Epidemic Tracks are not eligible for statutory damages,” with “a genuine dispute of fact” as to almost 90 tracks, for which the judge therefore didn’t grant summary judgment.

The order’s other components will have to wait for another time; the above information more or less sums things up. As for what’s next, a case management conference, which should bring with it concrete scheduling details, has been teed up for August 5th.