Music Publishers’ X Lawsuit Paused Following Cox v. Sony Ruling

Photo Credit: Dima Solomin

Major music publishers’ long-running copyright infringement lawsuit against X is now on hard pause following the Supreme Court’s Cox v. Sony Music decision.

The presiding judge made that pause official in a recent order, after the publishers and the Elon Musk-owned social platform asked the court to “stay all current deadlines.”

And the stay request didn’t come out of left field. As we previously broke down, the Supreme Court, in unanimously ruling in favor of Cox, found that service providers can be held contributorily liable only if they induced user infringement or tailored their core offerings to enable infringement.

Naturally, the decision’s significance for similar ISP repeat-piracy cases took center stage out of the gate. But the narrow secondary liability definition is already factoring into a number of copyright cases in and beyond the music world.

(One of the non-music cases: Textbook publishers’ copyright and trademark infringement showdown with Google, which promptly moved to stay discovery pending the resolution of a Cox v. Sony-related motion for partial judgment.)

Enter X’s push to toss the remainder of publishers’ infringement claims due to the perceived lack of secondary liability.

It’s against this backdrop, with a dismissal demand looming large, that both sides requested “a stay of all deadlines in the current schedule” so they could “meet and confer regarding the appropriate next steps for this litigation.”

And with Judge Aleta Trauger having signed off on the request, as mentioned, the litigants are expected to submit a joint schedule proposal by next Wednesday, April 8th.

Besides addressing X’s anticipated attempt to end the litigation, said schedule will cover the plaintiffs’ opposition and possible motions to amend the complaint and/or seek reconsideration of the prior partial dismissal.

On the latter front, it’s been two years and change since the court dismissed vicarious and direct infringement claims against X. And while it’s unclear what the reconsideration request may look like, the “possible” descriptor is important here; the plaintiffs only indicated that they “may file” related motions.

Time will tell where this definitive pause leads the years-running case – and what’s in store for other infringement disputes impacted by Cox v. Sony.

As noted, different ISP disputes jump out; the major labels’ suit against Altice was gearing up for a jury trial until being stayed pending the Supreme Court’s determination.

But so do complaints like Epidemic Sound’s nearly four-year-old (first) copyright action against Meta. Last week, the Facebook parent formally moved to invoke Cox v. Sony into its summary judgment motion. The presiding judge granted the request, and Meta has until April 16th to file a supplemental brief “addressing the impact of Cox Communications.”