Round Hill Music LP v. Suno, Inc., No. 5:26-cv-08507, is a copyright infringement action filed on August 17, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by the independent music publisher Round Hill Music and five affiliated funds against Suno and the data-collection companies Bright Data Ltd. and Bright Data Inc. It is assigned to District Judge Rita F. Lin, brought under 17 U.S.C. § 101 with nature of suit 820 (copyright), and carries a plaintiff jury demand (Source: courtlistener.com).
Round Hill filed a second, separate action against Anthropic the same day before a different judge (Round Hill Music v. Anthropic). Contemporaneous coverage described the filings as a single suit against both companies.
Infobox
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Plaintiffs | Round Hill Music LP; Round Hill Music Royalty Fund II, LP; Round Hill Music Royalty Fund III, LP; Round Hill Music Royalty Fund III Plus, LP; RH Carlin Holdings LLC; GFP Co-Invest, LP |
| Defendants | Suno, Inc.; Bright Data Ltd.; Bright Data Inc. |
| Court | U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:26-cv-08507 |
| Judge | Rita F. Lin (District Judge) |
| Filed | August 17, 2026 |
| Cause | 17 U.S.C. § 101 — copyright infringement |
| Nature of suit | 820 (Copyright) |
| Jury demand | Plaintiff |
| Plaintiffs' counsel | Richard S. Busch (Adams & Reese LLP, Nashville); Jeffrey E. Faucette (Skaggs Faucette LLP) |
Background
Round Hill Music is an independent music publisher and royalty-fund manager. Its chief executive, Josh Gruss, framed the filings in terms of licensing rather than opposition to the technology: "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" (Source: variety.com).
The action against Suno is one of several against the company. The 2024 label case UMG Recordings v. Suno (UMG Recordings v. Suno (AI music training data)) remains pending in the District of Massachusetts; a second label case over Suno's v6 model family was filed there on September 18, 2026 (UMG Recordings v. Suno (2026 — the v6 models)); Isbell v. Suno (right of publicity) is a putative class action over artist identity; and GEMA v. Suno (Munich Regional Court) proceeds in Germany. Unlike those, Round Hill's suit is brought by a publisher asserting rights in musical compositions rather than by a record company asserting rights in sound recordings — the same division of rights that separates Sony Music Publishing v. Anthropic from the label actions.
Claims
Round Hill alleges that its compositions were scraped without permission and used to train generative models. Variety reported that the complaint lists 500 songs said to have been part of the scraping, with a stated intention to amend the complaint to reflect at least 10,000 songs, and that Round Hill wrote that such violations would demand damages in the "hundreds of millions of dollars and may ultimately approach or exceed $1 billion" (Source: variety.com). That figure is a projected range stated in the complaint rather than a fixed sum demanded.
The inclusion of Bright Data as a defendant distinguishes this action from the other Suno cases and is not mentioned in the coverage located. Bright Data is a commercial web-data collection company. The complaint pleads direct copyright infringement against Suno only; against Bright Data it pleads contributory copyright infringement (statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each of the 500 works on Exhibit A, $75 million in total), trafficking in and use of circumvention technology under 17 U.S.C. § 1201, and removal of copyright management information under § 1202, alleging on information and belief that Suno obtained Round Hill's works from licensed streaming and lyrics platforms "in part through tools and proxy services supplied by Defendant Bright Data" and that Bright Data's role became known through the hack of Suno reported by 404 Media on July 15, 2026 (Source: storage.courtlistener.com).
Procedural history
The complaint was filed August 17, 2026 and the case assigned to Judge Rita F. Lin. Variety published its account on August 18, 2026 (Source: variety.com). No defence counsel appears on the docket as retrieved, and no terminating event is recorded (Source: courtlistener.com).
Open questions
- Whether the contributory-infringement and DMCA theories pleaded against Bright Data, a data vendor rather than a model developer, survive a motion to dismiss. (The earlier question of the theory on which Bright Data is joined is answered by the complaint; see Claims.)
- Whether the promised amendment expanding the asserted works from 500 to at least 10,000 has been filed.
- Whether the two Round Hill actions, filed the same day before different judges, are related or consolidated.
- Whether Suno has appeared or responded; no defence counsel is on the docket as retrieved.
Relationships
- instance-of: AI Copyright — a training-data infringement claim over musical compositions
- related: Round Hill Music v. Anthropic — companion action filed the same day by the same plaintiffs
- related: UMG Recordings v. Suno (AI music training data) — the 2024 label action against the same defendant
- related: UMG Recordings v. Suno (2026 — the v6 models) — the 2026 label action over the v6 models
- related: Isbell v. Suno (right of publicity) — putative class action against the same defendant
- related: Sony Music Publishing v. Anthropic — the parallel publisher-side claim structure
- litigates: Suno — defendant
- litigates: Bright Data — co-defendant (Bright Data Ltd. and Bright Data Inc.)
- depends-on: AI Copyright Litigation — Analysis — one of the actions compared there
- related: AI Music Generation — the technology at issue