Round Hill Music filed separate copyright infringement lawsuits against Suno and Anthropic on August 17, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, and says it has no intention of settling either case. Each complaint seeks statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work willfully infringed, which Round Hill says could add up to "hundreds of millions of dollars and potentially approach or conceivably exceed $1 billion" per case. Round Hill and its affiliated funds own or control more than 14,000 musical compositions and nearly 17,000 sound recordings, and each suit attaches an exhibit of 500 works as an initial sample, with plans to expand the claim to as many as 10,000 or more.
Among the songs named in the filings are "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls, "Total Eclipse of the Heart," written by Jim Steinman and performed by Bonnie Tyler, and James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)," which Round Hill says have been streamed a combined six billion times. The Suno complaint also names data-scraping firm Bright Data as a defendant, alleging it supplied the proxy networks that let Suno pull music and lyrics from licensed platforms. Round Hill founder and chief executive Josh Gruss framed the lawsuits as a matter of principle rather than opposition to AI itself: "We are not against artificial intelligence," he said. "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's legal strategy points toward a trial rather than a settlement. The company hired Richard S. Busch, who won the Blurred Lines case for Marvin Gaye's family, and both complaints demand a jury. "The question in these cases is not complicated," Busch said, pointing to a company "now valued at more than a trillion dollars" built in part on the back of songwriters who he says have "received nothing" for it.
Anthropic is already defending three other music copyright cases in the same California district, including a suit brought by Concord Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group and ABKCO over roughly 500 songs, and a second, larger case over more than 20,000 songs that Anthropic has moved to partly dismiss. Suno, meanwhile, has faced a wider wave of litigation this year: Germany's GEMA won a copyright ruling against the company in Munich on July 31, and more than 1,800 artists are backing separate class actions against Suno and Udio, even as some rightsholders, including BMG, have moved toward licensing deals with the company instead.
Round Hill, founded in 2010, manages a $1.1 billion portfolio of more than 200,000 copyrights. Neither Suno nor Anthropic had issued a public response to the new lawsuits as of Music Business Worldwide's report.
The facts
- Filed August 17, 2026 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California
- Seeks up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work, potentially exceeding $1 billion per case
- Round Hill owns or controls more than 14,000 compositions and nearly 17,000 recordings
- Suno complaint also names data-scraping firm Bright Data as a defendant
- Round Hill hired Richard S. Busch, who won the Blurred Lines case for Marvin Gaye's family
- Anthropic already defends three other music copyright suits in the same district
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