Suno and Anthropic Face Nearly $340 Million in Copyright Claims Over Songs by Madonna, Johnny Cash
Music publisher Reservoir is seeking nearly $340 million in possible legal damages from AI companies Suno and Anthropic. Reservoir accuses the companies of illegally copying copyrighted music linked to Madonna, Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell to train their artificial intelligence systems.
The two lawsuits were filed on October 21, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. They identify 1,050 musical compositions that Suno allegedly used and lyrics from 853 compositions that Anthropic allegedly used. Anthropic makes the Claude chatbot. Reservoir claims both companies broke copyright laws and federal rules that protect access to copyrighted material and information identifying it.
The lawsuits seek about $186.4 million from Suno and $151.4 million from Anthropic in legal damages set by law. These amounts are based on the highest penalties available for the alleged violations. To receive these amounts, Reservoir must prove that the companies are legally responsible and convince the court to award the maximum damages allowed. The publisher also wants court orders to stop further infringement and require the companies to remove or destroy unauthorized copies.
The works named in the lawsuits include Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" and Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now." Reservoir and its publishing partners claim ownership rights in the musical compositions themselves, which are separate from the recordings of the songs performed by the artists.
The lawsuit against Suno claims that the AI music generator copied protected works from online music platforms and other sources to build a service that creates complete songs from user instructions. Reservoir argues that Suno built a commercial product using music it had not licensed or received permission to copy.
According to the lawsuit, Suno collected material by copying content from services such as YouTube Music and other digital platforms. Reservoir points to information about how the company collected data and argues that recordings and musical compositions were added to its AI training datasets without paying the copyright owners.
Reservoir also accuses Suno of building technology that competes with the musicians and songwriters whose work allegedly helped train it. The lawsuit argues that Suno tried to attract listeners with AI-generated songs that could replace human-made music while avoiding the licensing fees normally paid to use copyrighted songs.
The separate lawsuit against Anthropic focuses on copyrighted song lyrics allegedly copied to train Claude, a general-purpose AI assistant. Reservoir claims Anthropic obtained lyrics without permission and that its AI models can produce large parts of copyrighted songs when users ask for them.
Both lawsuits include claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Reservoir alleges that the companies got around technical protections meant to control access to copyrighted material and removed or changed copyright information, such as songwriter credits and publisher names.
This federal law allows legal action for certain violations involving technical controls on access and information that identifies copyright owners. These claims make up part of the damages Reservoir seeks in addition to those for the alleged copyright infringement.
Anthropic denies the allegations and has said it plans to fight the lawsuit strongly. Suno has previously argued that using copyrighted material to train AI systems may count as fair use. This legal rule allows certain uses of protected works without permission, depending on the purpose and nature of the use, how much material is used and how the use affects the market for the original work.
The dispute comes as Suno faces other lawsuits from major record labels and independent music publishers. Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are continuing their copyright claims against the company, including claims about newer versions of its AI music-making technology.
In a filing on October 20 in a separate lawsuit brought by Universal and Sony, Suno acknowledged that it had kept some sound recordings used to train its AI models. The company argued that keeping these materials followed the record labels' earlier requests to preserve training datasets while the legal cases continued.
Suno has also signed licensing agreements with Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. Reservoir cites these agreements as evidence that there is a commercial market for licensing copyrighted works to train AI systems. The publisher argues that these deals challenge Suno's position that its earlier use of protected material was legal.
Reservoir's lawyer, Richard Busch, accuses Suno of copying music first and seeking licenses only after establishing its place in the market. The lawsuit presents the company's recent licensing deals as a change in strategy after it faced growing legal pressure.
Reservoir founder and CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi said the company supports new technology but will protect the rights of its songwriters, artists and publishing partners when their work is allegedly used without permission.
Legal battles over AI training are continuing in federal courts. On October 21, Anthropic and several major music publishers presented arguments in a separate copyright case about Claude's use of protected song lyrics. The judge heard arguments from both sides about fair use and whether AI-generated material could affect the market for music licenses but did not make a decision.