Round Hill Music Sues Suno and Anthropic Over AI Training

Independent music publisher Round Hill Music has filed separate copyright infringement lawsuits against Suno and Anthropic in the U.S. Court for the Northern District of California, alleging both companies trained their AI systems on music without authorization.

Two Complaints, Same Core Issue

The complaint against Anthropic claims the AI giant used lyrics from at least 500 Round Hill-controlled compositions to train its Claude chatbot. The catalog includes James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris." The Suno suit alleges the AI music generator ingested master recordings from the same catalog, which also includes Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and Dio's "Holy Diver."

Round Hill said it may eventually expand both cases to cover 10,000 or more compositions, with damages that could "conceivably exceed $1 billion" given statutory penalties of up to $150,000 per work found willfully infringed.

Publisher Vows to Take Both Cases to Trial

CEO Josh Gruss said the publisher intends to take both cases to trial rather than accept a settlement that shortchanges songwriters. "We are privileged to act as stewards of some of the greatest musical works of our time, and we answer to the writers and artists who created them," Gruss said in a statement. "We are not against artificial intelligence. We are against the idea that you can build a business worth billions on top of other people's creative work and pay the creators nothing."

Round Hill is being represented by Richard S. Busch of Adams and Reese LLP, who secured the legal victory for the family of Marvin Gaye in the copyright case over Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines."

Part of a Broader Legal Battle

The filings extend a legal reckoning that has trailed both companies for years. Suno has fended off lawsuits from all three major labels since mid-2024. Warner settled and struck a licensing deal in November 2025 while Universal Music Group and Sony remain in active litigation. Suno also faces a lawsuit spearheaded by Hagens Berman, a powerhouse law firm claiming to have secured the largest litigation recovery in history at $260 billion, filed on behalf of independent artists who alleged the platform's models trained on "tens of millions" of copyrighted recordings.

Round Hill announced the lawsuits on August 22, 2026.