Round Hill Music L.P. (‘Round Hill’ or the ‘Company’), the pioneering private equity platform founded in 2010 that manages a US$1.1 billion portfolio of music rights, has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Suno, Inc. (‘Suno’) and Anthropic PBC (‘Anthropic’).

The suits allege that the defendants used musical works that are owned or managed by Round Hill without authorization, license, or compensation to train their AI models. Among the claims filed, the suits allege that the defendants reproduced Round Hill’s intellectual property on their servers in violation of the Copyright Act, and used data scraping software to bypass security measures and copyright protections in violation of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

Round Hill Music is an independent music publisher and record company, and the manager of investment funds that hold the many thousands of copyrights at issue in the legal proceedings, including some of the best known songs and records of the past 50 years. Among the works at issue are “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler, written by Jim Steinman, and “I Got You (I Feel Good)” by James Brown, which alone have collectively streamed over six billion times.

Josh Gruss, CEO and founder of Round Hill Music, said: “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. 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. Licensing isn’t an obstacle to innovation – it is there to protect the legal owners of the raw material, their property. As an independent music company, we have the freedom and obligation to say that plainly and to act on it. We intend to take these cases to trial and to hold these companies accountable, and we will not accept a resolution that leaves songwriters and artists deprived of their rightful share of compensation.”

Round Hill is being represented by Richard S. Busch of Adams and Reese LLP, who has represented songwriters and rights holders in some of the most significant copyright cases of the past 20 years, including securing a landmark victory with the “Blurred Lines” case for the family of Marvin Gaye.

Richard S. Busch added: “The question in these cases is not complicated. Copyrighted works have been used to build multi-billion dollar businesses, and in the case of Anthropic a company now valued at more than a trillion dollars, while the songwriters and publishers who created the foundations of that value have received nothing. There is nothing fair about that use, and we look forward to making our arguments to the Court and in front of a jury.”

The documents pertaining to these filings can be accessed here.

Headshots of Josh Gruss and Richard S. Busch can be accessed here.

About Round Hill Music LP

Founded in 2010, Round Hill Music is a leading private equity platform specializing in music catalog investment and management, with over US$1.1 billion in assets under management. With a presence in the major music and entertainment markets of New York, Nashville, Los Angeles and London, Round Hill combines deep music industry expertise and investment acumen to acquire, manage and monetize high-quality music rights.

Benefitting from its established reputation and trusted relationships across the music industry, Round Hill currently manages over 150 time-tested catalogs, including over 200,000 songs performed by iconic artists such as George Harrison, Elvis Presley, Bruno Mars, Chaka Khan, Morgan Wallen, the Goo Goo Dolls, Bryan Adams, Matchbox Twenty, Black Sabbath, The Killers, Meat Loaf and Madonna. Its experienced approach to music rights management and proprietary investment capabilities support its delivery of attractive risk-adjusted returns to investors through disciplined, value-driven strategies. Round Hill Music is set apart by its c.50-strong in-house team which enhances asset value through active management and advanced sync licensing across film, television and advertising platforms.

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