Sony and Universal File New Lawsuit: Suno Allegedly Infringed 60,202 Recordings
Suno launched v6 on September 9, 2026 as a model built on licensed label content, with backing from Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe. Nine days later, on Friday, September 18, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group sued the company again in federal court in Boston — with the new, contested argument that v6 allegedly inherits the alleged copyright infringements from Suno's earlier models, something the company strongly disputes.
What the new lawsuit says
The lawsuit was filed on Friday, September 18 in federal court in Boston — in the District of Massachusetts, where the labels' original case against Suno is already underway. According to Variety, the plaintiffs claim that Suno has infringed 60,202 recordings from Sony and UMG since the company's debut, a total the labels themselves describe as "just a small portion" of the total number of infringed works.
The core of the new argument is that v6 does not constitute a clean start. "v6 is not a new beginning; it is the fruit of the same poisoned tree," the labels write in the complaint, as quoted by Variety. The complaint, which Gizmodo has reproduced, further states: "Training a 'new' model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it."
According to Music Business Worldwide (MBW), which says it obtained the complaint itself, the plaintiffs claim that Suno has admitted that v6 was trained on "user interactions" with earlier versions of the models — that is, outputs from models that were themselves allegedly trained on unlicensed recordings. The complaint also advances a second knowledge-transfer theory, including distillation techniques, but it is, according to MBW, made "on information and belief" — that is, as the plaintiffs' evidentiary hypothesis, not as documented fact.
Suno's response — and an evolving narrative
Suno rejected the lawsuit. A spokesperson called the claims "fundamentally flawed on both the facts and the law," according to both Variety and Gizmodo. Speaking to Variety, the spokesperson explained that when a user enters an artist's name, the platform surfaces "musical qualities" — "not so a user can mimic someone's work, but so people learn music's language and create something of their own."
The company has also confirmed that the v6 models were partially trained on "creations" made by users on the platform, Suno states in a statement quoted by MBW on September 22. MBW notes that this is apparently the first time Suno has publicly placed user creations in the v6 training basis.
This confirmation stands in some tension with the framing at the launch itself. When v6 launched on September 9, Suno's chief product officer (CPO) Jack Brody told MBW that the models were trained "entirely from the ground up," using a combination of licensed partner data, user data and the team's accumulated learning. It remains unclear exactly what is in the v6 training set, and to what extent user-generated audio from earlier models is included — this is the core of the disagreement between the parties, and it is unresolved. "From the ground up" may refer to architecture and training process, while "creations and interactions" concern the data basis; but the plaintiffs argue precisely that the data basis inherits the infringement from the predecessor models.
The numbers and the stakes
The figures in the case are substantial. US copyright law sets statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement. Across the 60,202 recordings asserted against Suno, that yields a theoretical maximum of just over $9 billion, according to MBW's analysis. This is a statistical ceiling — not an amount the labels have claimed — but it illustrates the order of magnitude of the potential damages liability.
The case itself is not new either. Sony, UMG and Warner Music Group originally sued Suno in June 2024, alleging that the company had trained its AI models on their songs without permission. The new lawsuit thus comes more than two years after the first.
Suno is valued at $5.4 billion according to Billboard, and states itself that it has 2 million paying users and 100 million people who have made songs with the service.
The split among the labels
What makes the case particularly pointed is that v6 launched with backing from parts of the industry. Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe have signed licensing deals with Suno, whose content, according to Billboard, helps power v6 — while two of the three major companies, Sony and UMG, escalated legal pressure in the same month.
How the partners will decide which music is actually licensed remains unclear. An anonymous Suno executive said at the launch, speaking to Billboard: "For the data that's licensed for training, it's handled by the rights holders. So Warner has basically figured out which music should be handed over as part of that process for training." The statement points to a practical issue that underlies the whole dispute: even when licensing deals exist, questions remain about scope and who controls which content is covered.
Why the theory may matter beyond this case
The legal novelty in the lawsuit is the combination of two arguments. The first is what may be called the plaintiffs' "tainted descent" theory: if v6 is partially built on outputs and interaction data from earlier models that were themselves allegedly trained on unlicensed recordings, then a licensing deal for the new model cannot "launder" away the inheritance. The second is knowledge transfer, including via distillation — a common machine learning technique in which a new model is trained to reproduce a predecessor's learned behavior. The plaintiffs turn the technique's own logic against the company: if v6 learns from a predecessor, and the predecessor learned from unlicensed recordings, v6 inherits the unlicensed material.
Both theories are, for now, hypotheses advanced by the plaintiffs — in part "on information and belief" — and it is uncertain whether the court will entertain them. But if they gain traction, they could have implications far beyond the music industry: model lines built across generations — true of most large AI systems — could then inherit legal risk from their predecessors.
Open questions
Several things remain unresolved. First, the evidence: the claims about knowledge transfer and synthetic training material are advanced as the plaintiffs' hypotheses, and Suno has not disclosed details about what the v6 training set actually contains. The company denies the claims are accurate, and maintains the model was built from the ground up on licensed data, user data and its own learning. The contradiction between the parties' accounts is unresolved.
Second, the relationship between the licensing deals and the lawsuit. WMG was part of the original lawsuit in 2024 but is now a partner; Sony and UMG are suing while industry colleagues license. How the agreements and the litigation interact — and whether licensing proves to be the way forward for the entire industry — is an open question.
Third, the fair use question: the dispute over Suno remains one of the test arenas for whether training generative models on copyrighted material is lawful use or infringement. The lawsuit of September 18 introduces new arguments into that fight — and whatever the outcome, it could matter for how AI models with a "lineage" are judged legally.