Canada’s SOCAN Sues Suno Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

Canadian collecting society SOCAN has sued Suno for copyright infringement, days after Jason Isbell filed a proposed class action against the AI music platform and Gerencia 360 brought its own lawsuit.

Lawsuit distinction:

• While collecting societies such as Germany’s GEMA and Denmark’s Koda have targeted Suno’s alleged unauthorized use of music to train its model, SOCAN’s case focuses on Suno’s outputs and their streaming to users in Canada.

The details:

• The lawsuit lists 150 tracks, or outputs, on Suno’s platform that SOCAN says are identical or substantially similar to songs in its repertoire.

• It describes these as the “tip of the iceberg.”

• Songs include Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway,” Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi,” K. Maro’s “Femme Like U,” Alexisonfire’s “Passing Out in America,” Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” and Daniel Balavoine’s “S.O.S. d’un terrien en détresse.”

Damages sought:

• SOCAN is seeking damages and any profits Suno has generated through the alleged infringement, in a sum to be set at trial.

• Alternatively, it seeks statutory damages of CAD $2.74 million (approx. USD $2m) based on the 137 SOCAN-represented songs cited in the claim at CAD $20,000 per song.

• The collecting society is separately seeking CAD $10 million (around USD $7.2m) in punitive and exemplary damages.

• SOCAN is also seeking two injunctions against Suno: the first would prevent it from infringing the songs named in the lawsuit, while the second would cover every song SOCAN represents now or comes to represent in the future.

What they said:

• Jennifer Brown, CEO of SOCAN: “SOCAN has a responsibility to act when the rights of music creators and publishers are put at risk. The evidence shows that the Suno platform has generated and streamed outputs that copy works in our repertoire, and that cannot go unchallenged. Innovation can’t come at the expense of human creativity. The future of music must belong to the people who make it.”