Reservoir sues Suno and Anthropic for nearly $340 million
The publisher's two lawsuits cover 1,050 compositions against Suno and lyrics from 853 against Anthropic, filed the same day in federal court.
Reservoir Media Management filed two separate federal copyright lawsuits on October 21, 2026, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, one against Suno and one against Anthropic, according to the report. The combined potential statutory damages across both cases reach nearly $340 million, with the Suno suit covering 1,050 musical compositions and the Anthropic suit focused on the lyrics of 853 compositions. Plaintiffs in both cases are Reservoir Media Management, its UK subsidiary, and Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Limited.
The Suno complaint alleges the company reproduced, distributed, and created unauthorized derivative works from Reservoir's compositions without a license, and also accuses Suno of circumventing digital access controls and removing copyright management information. The filing cites Suno's own leaked source code as evidence, identifying titles including Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now," Ben Harper's "Diamonds on the Inside," and Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," along with references to works by Big & Rich and Kings of Leon found in a second internal file. Joni Mitchell is the most represented artist in the Suno exhibit, credited on 149 of the 1,050 listed compositions.
The Anthropic complaint instead focuses on song lyrics, accusing the company of copying lyrics from 853 Reservoir-catalog compositions to train its Claude models. Anthropic said in a statement shared with Billboard that it disagrees with the claims and intends to defend the case vigorously; Suno had not issued a public comment at the time the filings became public. Reservoir's catalog works named across both filings include Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," Miles Davis's "So What," and four songs by Evanescence, among others.
Here's the thing worth sitting with: this isn't a vague "AI stole our music" complaint. Reservoir's lawyers reportedly pulled titles straight out of Suno's own leaked source code — Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash, Ben Harper, named and matched. That's the kind of evidence that makes a defendant's "we intend to defend vigorously" sound thinner than it did yesterday. If you're a songwriter or a publisher watching from the sidelines, this is your reminder to know exactly who holds your rights and whether they're the type to file first and litigate hard — because Reservoir just showed what that looks like.
From the Coral Wire edition of Thu, Oct 29 2026 · Coral Index 46/100 (Mixed signals)
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