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Nashville-based independent music publisher Round Hill Music filed two copyright infringement lawsuits on Monday against AI music generator Suno and AI company Anthropic, alleging both firms scraped and used more than 500 of its copyrighted songs to train their AI models — without authorization, license, or compensation — and announced it intends to take both cases to a jury rather than negotiate a settlement.
That last part is new. Major labels — Universal, Sony, and Warner — have used the same legal playbook to either settle for licensing deals or fight from positions of corporate scale. Round Hill is a private equity-backed independent publisher managing a $1.1 billion portfolio, and its CEO Josh Gruss said plainly what that independence allows: “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.”
The cases, filed in federal court in California on August 17, target two legally distinct AI business models — and the distinction matters more than it might appear.
What Round Hill Is Claiming, and Why the Two Suits Are Different
The Round Hill/Suno suit alleges what the major-label cases have alleged for two years: that Suno ingested the actual master sound recordings of copyrighted songs to train a model that generates new music commercially, competing directly with the recordings it was trained on. Round Hill’s catalog is hardly obscure. It includes James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good),” Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, the Kinks’ “Lola,” and Dio’s “Holy Diver.”
The Round Hill/Anthropic suit is narrower, but possibly stronger legally. Round Hill is a music publisher, not a record label. Its primary assets are publishing rights — the underlying compositions, which means the melody and the words. The Anthropic suit does not allege infringement of master sound recordings; it alleges that Claude was trained on the lyrics of at least 500 of its compositions to help the chatbot respond to human prompts. That is a claim about literary expression: specific words written by specific songwriters, protected by copyright from the moment they were fixed in a tangible form.
In both suits, Round Hill alleges that the defendants reproduced its intellectual property on servers in violation of the Copyright Act and used data-scraping software to bypass security measures and copyright protections in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Round Hill says both cases could later expand to potentially ten thousand or more compositions, with damages that could “conceivably exceed $1 billion” per suit.
Why the “Open-Source Melodies” Argument Does Not Apply Here
A question that reliably surfaces whenever music and AI copyright litigation is discussed is whether a 2019 programming stunt by attorney-musician Damien Riehl and coder Noah Rubin makes any of this moot. The two used an algorithm running at 300,000 melodies per second to generate all 68-plus billion possible 8-note, 12-beat melody combinations in MIDI format, and released the entire dataset under a Creative Commons Zero license — public domain, reserved rights none. Their argument: melodies are mathematical facts, and facts cannot be copyrighted. If every melody already exists in the public domain, no future AI-generated melody can infringe.
The argument is clever. It has nothing to do with the Round Hill lawsuits, for three distinct reasons.
First, rhythms were explicitly excluded, because they present different legal issues, as the Music 3.0 analysis confirms. The project covered only melodic sequences in a single octave — not the full structure of a song.
Second, the project did not touch lyrics. Lyrics are literary expression, not numbers. They are precisely the kind of original, creative human authorship that copyright law was designed to protect from the beginning. No algorithm has generated every possible song lyric and released the results to the public domain, and no such project would be legally meaningful if attempted — lyrics involve combinations of words that far exceed what brute force can exhaust. The Anthropic claim in this case rests entirely on lyrics, where the Riehl-Rubin work is legally irrelevant.
Third, the project did not address sound recordings. A composition copyright and a sound recording copyright are two entirely separate legal estates, even for the same song. The composition copyright protects the underlying melody and words, and is typically held by publishers and songwriters. The sound recording copyright protects the specific recorded performance on a particular track, and is typically held by the artist and record label. When James Brown recorded “I Got You (I Feel Good),” that act created two separate copyrights: one for the composition (the notes and words), and one for that particular performance. Even if every melody in the world were already in the public domain, that would not authorize copying the specific studio performance of that song to train a commercial AI system.
In the Suno case, the claim is that both types of copyright were infringed. In the Anthropic case, the claim is narrower: only the publishing rights — the compositions and their lyrics — are at issue, because Claude is an AI chatbot, not an AI music generator.
Why the Anthropic Claim Tests the Weakest Corner of the Fair Use Defense
AI companies defending copyright lawsuits have generally argued that training constitutes “transformative use” under the fair use doctrine — that ingesting copyrighted works to build a model creates something so new and different that it falls outside the scope of what copyright was meant to protect. The argument has had mixed results under the fair use four-factor test.
In June 2025, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California ruled that Anthropic’s training on books constituted transformative fair use, though he simultaneously ruled that storing millions of pirated books in a permanent library did not. That ruling, preceded by a $1.5 billion settlement, applies to books. It is a single district-court ruling, not binding on any other court, and it applied to a use that courts have found more clearly transformative: building a general-purpose language model on text.
In February 2025, a Delaware federal court ruled against AI fair use in Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre v. Ross Intelligence, ruling that training an AI legal-research platform on Westlaw’s copyrighted headnotes was not fair use — specifically because the AI product was designed to compete directly with Westlaw. That ruling is on appeal to the Third Circuit.
The Round Hill/Anthropic claim sits at the difficult end of the fair-use spectrum for AI companies. The use being alleged is not a general-purpose model consuming text to understand language; it is the reproduction of specific creative lyrics so that an AI chatbot can reproduce or synthesize those lyrics when prompted. An expanded complaint filed in July 2026 in a separate ongoing suit by Universal Music Publishing, Concord, and ABKCO revealed that Anthropic employees internally prompted Claude for lyrics during development — including an internal record of Anthropic co-founder and Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown asking the model for the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row.” Publishers in that suit have argued that Claude’s ability to reproduce lyrics was “a feature, not a bug.”
Anthropic has maintained in court filings that training on lyrics is “spectacularly transformative” and that its models understand “the interrelationships between words and concepts in human language.” The question of whether a chatbot reproducing the specific words of a copyrighted song constitutes transformative use — or whether it substitutes for licensed lyric aggregation services that publishers have actually licensed — remains unresolved.
Who Round Hill Is, and Why It Is Not Going to Settle
Round Hill Music was founded in 2010 by Josh Gruss, a former Atlantic Records assistant and Bear Stearns analyst who helped pioneer private equity investment in music catalogs. The company manages a portfolio of publishing rights and some master recordings, focused specifically on pre-2010 evergreen catalogs in rock, pop, and classic R&B — music with documented, consistent royalty streams. The $1.1 billion figure represents assets under management at the publishing and investment platform level, not a public market capitalization; Round Hill’s royalty fund is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Gruss has been telegraphing this move since at least 2023, when he said publicly that scraping recordings to feed an algorithm “probably should be properly licensed first.” He filed the suits on Monday with attorney Richard S. Busch of Adams and Reese, a Nashville-based IP litigator who won the landmark “Blurred Lines” verdict — a $7.4 million jury verdict for the heirs of Marvin Gaye against Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke. Busch was named to Billboard’s 2026 Top Music Lawyers list specifically for his work protecting artists in AI-era copyright disputes.
Round Hill’s commitment to a jury verdict rather than a settlement is not just rhetoric. Gruss said explicitly that the company “will not accept a resolution that leaves songwriters and artists deprived of their rightful share of compensation.” That posture distinguishes Round Hill from every major label that has been involved in AI music copyright litigation to date. Warner Music Group settled with Suno in November 2025. Universal Music Group settled with Udio in October 2025 and is building a licensed AI music platform. Only Sony Music has continued to fight Suno without settling, and Sony’s calculus is arguably strategic: a favorable court ruling would compel all AI music companies to license, not just Suno.
Round Hill has a different calculus. As an independent publisher without a streaming-platform relationship or an AI venture to build, it has no incentive to trade a legal claim for a licensing deal. A jury verdict in its favor would carry the same risk of precedent-setting damages that concerns AI companies most. Under U.S. copyright law, willful infringement can carry statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work. With 500 songs in the initial complaint and plans to expand to 10,000 or more, the damages ceiling is not theoretical.
Why Round Hill’s No-Settlement Pledge Matters to the Broader AI Copyright Landscape
The major-label lawsuits against AI companies created legal pressure, then converted that pressure into licensing revenue. That is a coherent business strategy for companies that need ongoing relationships with AI platforms. It is also, as the American Federation of Musicians argued in suing Warner and Universal, a strategy that left session musicians whose performances were used for training with nothing.
Round Hill does not have a streaming licensing relationship to protect. It does not need Suno or Anthropic as future partners. What Gruss said is true on its face: Round Hill answers to the songwriters and artists whose catalogs it manages, and those writers and artists have received nothing from AI companies that have acknowledged using their work in training.
The legal significance of a no-settlement plaintiff extends beyond Round Hill’s specific claims. Every settlement in AI copyright litigation has occurred before a final judgment on the merits of the fair-use question. Anthropic’s $1.5 billion book settlement resolved before the case produced binding appellate precedent. Warner’s Suno deal settled before a ruling. Udio’s deals settled before any court assessed whether training on their specific data was lawful. A plaintiff willing to take a case to final judgment — including through appeal — could produce the first binding ruling on whether AI companies must compensate rights holders for training use. That ruling, if it came from a circuit court, would reshape what every AI company operating in that jurisdiction owes in retrospect.
Round Hill is not the only plaintiff in a position to produce such a ruling. Sony Music has not settled its case against Suno, and that case is scheduled for dispositive motions through at least April 2027 in Massachusetts. Germany’s Munich Regional Court already ruled on July 31, 2026, that training without licensing infringed GEMA-represented composers’ rights — the first European ruling to confirm that AI music platforms must license. That ruling is under appeal. The European Court of Justice’s Advocate General is expected to issue an opinion in Case C-250/25 on September 3, 2026, which could set standards across the European Union.
Round Hill’s suits add two new fronts where settlement may not be an option — which means they add two more chances for a court to answer the question the industry most needs answered.
What Suno and Anthropic Face Specifically
For Suno, Round Hill’s complaint joins a litigation stack that has grown substantially more threatening over the past year. Suno raised $400 million at $5.4 billion valuation in June 2026, giving it resources to fight prolonged litigation. But funding does not resolve the legal question. The Munich Regional Court’s July 31 ruling confirmed infringement of GEMA’s repertoire under German copyright law, and the court required Suno to stop unauthorized reproduction, disclose revenue tied to the infringement, and pay damages. Suno said it plans to appeal. If its appeal fails and the ruling is confirmed at a higher German court level, the memorization doctrine applied — that storing a copyrighted work in model weights in a form that reproduces it on output constitutes infringement of the reproduction right — could extend across the EU’s generative AI landscape. The European Court of Justice’s expected opinion in Case C-250/25 in September 2026 will clarify that scope.
In the United States, Suno’s best-case outcome is a ruling by Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV in Massachusetts that AI training on legitimately acquired recordings constitutes fair use. That case has no current trial date; dispositive motions are not due until April 9, 2027. Sony Music, which has refused to settle, is the plaintiff pressing that case to judgment. Round Hill’s suit adds a parallel track that Sony cannot control and that Round Hill will not settle.
For Anthropic, Round Hill’s suit arrives as the company navigates a complex litigation portfolio. Its $1.5 billion book settlement was finalized on July 21, 2026, with a federal judge approving the payout of approximately $3,000 per covered work across roughly 500,000 titles — the largest copyright class-action payout in U.S. history. But that settlement resolved books, not music. Separately, Universal Music Publishing, Concord, and ABKCO filed a $3 billion suit in January 2026 over 20,000-plus songs; BMG filed its own suit in March 2026 alleging infringement of 493 compositions; and both suits remain active. Round Hill’s case is a third music-lyrics suit against Anthropic, brought by a publisher that has explicitly refused to settle.
Attorney Richard Busch, representing Round Hill in both cases, said the central question 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.”
The broader pattern visible across this litigation is now consistent: the music industry’s legal strategy is not to shut down AI music, but to ensure that every company that profited from training on copyrighted recordings ultimately pays for the privilege. Round Hill’s cases represent the clearest statement yet that some rights holders will not accept a licensing deal as a substitute for that payment. Whether that strategy produces a jury verdict that changes the economics of AI training entirely — or produces a settlement that, despite Gruss’s stated position, the company ultimately accepts — depends on what Suno and Anthropic offer. For now, the answer from Round Hill is no deal.
Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat does Round Hill Music actually own, and why does that make its Anthropic case different from the major-label suits?
Round Hill Music is a music publisher, not a record label. Publishers hold the rights to the underlying compositions — the melodies and lyrics written by songwriters. Record labels hold the rights to master sound recordings — the specific recorded performances. When major labels sued Suno, they were primarily asserting rights in sound recordings. Round Hill’s case against Anthropic targets only publishing rights (lyrics), because Claude is a text-based chatbot, not a music generator. That distinction matters legally: it is harder for Anthropic to argue that a chatbot reproducing specific song lyrics verbatim is “transformative” use when the output competes directly with licensed lyric services that publishers have actually sold access to.
Can a melodies-are-math argument — like the Riehl-Rubin public domain project — protect AI companies from these lawsuits?
No, not in these cases. The Riehl-Rubin project in 2019 algorithmically generated every possible 8-note, 12-beat MIDI melody and released them under a Creative Commons Zero license, arguing melodies are mathematical facts and therefore uncopyrightable. The project explicitly excluded rhythms and did not address lyrics at all. Round Hill’s Anthropic suit is about lyrics — literary expression that copyright law protects specifically because of its creative originality. And Round Hill’s Suno suit targets sound recordings, a completely separate copyright estate from melodies. Even if the melody argument were legally valid (it has not been judicially validated), it would not affect either claim in these suits.
What is the legal significance of Round Hill refusing to settle?
Every major AI copyright lawsuit to date — Anthropic’s book case, Warner’s Suno deal, Universal’s Udio deal — settled before producing binding legal precedent. That means the core question (whether AI training on copyrighted works without authorization is fair use) remains legally unresolved. A plaintiff willing to take a case to final judgment and through appeal could produce the first circuit-court ruling binding on the entire industry. Round Hill’s commitment to a jury verdict, combined with its choice of attorney Richard Busch — who won the $7.4 million “Blurred Lines” verdict for the Marvin Gaye estate — signals that the company is specifically trying to produce that outcome rather than convert the legal threat into a licensing deal.
What happens to songwriters whose music is already in an AI company’s training data?
Under current U.S. law, the answer is unclear. Even where major labels have settled, session musicians and independent artists have generally received no share of settlement payments — the American Federation of Musicians sued Warner and Universal in 2026 specifically over this gap. For writers covered by a publisher like Round Hill, the publisher’s lawsuit attempts to recover damages that would flow to the rights holders it represents. The legal theory being tested in Round Hill’s Anthropic case — that using lyrics to train an AI chatbot is copyright infringement rather than fair use — has not been finally resolved by any U.S. court. If Round Hill wins at trial and the ruling survives appeal, it would establish that AI companies owe composers and publishers retroactive compensation, not just future licensing fees.