A federal magistrate blocked Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment from obtaining Suno’s settlement agreement with Warner Music Group in April. Now, the AI startup is pointing to the labels’ “mischaracterization” of the ruling in an attempt to reopen a dispute that they already lost.
That’s according to Suno’s response to the labels’ objection to the magistrate judge’s April 6 discovery ruling.
Following a March 12 conference, US Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson at the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled on a series of discovery disputes including UMG and Sony’s request to pry open the terms of Suno’s settlement with Warner Music, a former co-plaintiff in the lawsuit.
The magistrate at the time said, “the relevance of this information is marginal and the potential for chilling settlements—in this and other cases—is high.”
“As Suno argues, settlements of litigation have little persuasive bearing on identifying and characterizing markets for intellectual property,” the magistrate said in an order, which you can read here.
Most recently on May 4, Suno filed a response to the labels’ objection to the magistrate judge’s April ruling. In the latest court filing, which you can read here, Suno’s lawyers wrote: “Plaintiffs’ objections are, at core, an attempt to relitigate a dispute they lost before Magistrate Judge Levenson, raising largely the same arguments they made before and asking this Court to reach a different conclusion.”
“Plaintiffs’ objections are, at core, an attempt to relitigate a dispute they lost before Magistrate Judge Levenson, raising largely the same arguments they made before and asking this Court to reach a different conclusion.”
Suno’s brief
Suno’s lawyers backed the magistrate judge’s decision, pointing to a common legal standard that agreements made during a lawsuit don’t have strong probative value for establishing market rates. The basis for that argument: said deals are influenced by a party’s fear of losing in court, and so carry details that an agreement forged in an open market might not.
Suno’s latest brief added: “And the sensitivity of disclosure here is self-evident: UMG, Sony, and Warner jointly brought this action asserting the same cause of action based on the same course of conduct.”
“Requiring Suno to hand the remaining Plaintiffs a blueprint of the terms on which it resolved claims identical to theirs would compromise settlement dynamics and threaten to chill future settlements by similarly situated parties—results Judge Levenson rightly sought to avoid.”
“Requiring Suno to hand the remaining Plaintiffs a blueprint of the terms on which it resolved claims identical to theirs would compromise settlement dynamics and threaten to chill future settlements by similarly situated parties—results Judge Levenson rightly sought to avoid.”
Suno’s brief
The filing comes nearly six months after Warner Music exited the lawsuit the three major labels had filed against Suno in 2024. Warner Music and Suno reached a settlement in November 2025 in what they described as a “first-of-its-kind partnership”. The deal also saw Suno acquiring live music and concert-discovery platform Songkick from Warner Music.
The two remaining labels in the lawsuit want to see what Warner Music agreed to. In discovery, they requested “all documents concerning ‘Suno’s plans to alter its business and/or AI music generation service following its licensing agreement with Warner’ and all post-February 2025 ‘materials regarding its efforts to license training data’ inclusive of the Warner settlement,” according to Suno’s filing.
Magistrate Judge Levenson rejected that request, and UMG and Sony objected. Their lawyers wrote in a filing on April 20, which you can read here, “[T]he Order treats the Warner agreement as little more than a ‘settlement’ of past claims, ignoring that it is also a forward-looking commercial arrangement. Warner and Suno could have settled Warner’s legal claims and moved on. But that is not what they did.”
The plaintiffs’ lawyers added: “They also executed a go-forward license for Suno to use Warner’s copyrighted sound recordings as training data for new AI models. It is misleading for Suno to present to the Court its ongoing partnership with Warner as purely a settlement. This backward-looking frame is plainly at odds with the public record. The Order’s failure to account for the go-forward nature of the partnership is clearly erroneous.”
The labels also cited Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72(a), which states that a district judge may “modify or set aside” any part of a magistrate judge’s decision if it’s “clearly erroneous or is contrary to law.”
However, Suno’s lawyers argued that UMG and Sony Music cannot identify “any clear error” in the magistrate judge’s reasoning.
“Plaintiffs’ demand that this Court second-guess Judge Levenson’s judgment and substitute their preferred outcome for his reasoned analysis should be rejected.”
The labels also argued in April in their opposition filing that any go-forward licensing fee included in the Suno-Warner Music agreement also reflects the value of the potential license fees that Suno avoided when training its commercial AI models without copyright authorization.
They added that the licensing fee is indicative of the value Suno places on using high-quality, copyrighted works to train its AI models.
“Plaintiffs’ additional claim that the agreement is relevant to damages because it may reveal ‘specific functions for Suno’s future models’ or ‘outlin[e]’ Suno’s purported future removal of their recordings from its training data rests on pure speculation.”
Suno’s brief
However, Suno’s legal team said the labels’ argument “confirms that Plaintiffs seek the agreement for a purpose for which they will not be permitted to use it.”
“Even assuming the agreement has any relevance to damages… Rule 408 prohibits Plaintiffs from using the agreement for that purpose, rendering Plaintiffs’ relevance argument merely academic. Plaintiffs’ additional claim that the agreement is relevant to damages because it may reveal ‘specific functions for Suno’s future models’ or ‘outlin[e]’ Suno’s purported future removal of their recordings from its training data rests on pure speculation,” Suno’s lawyers added.
Suno also argued that handing the labels insight into what Suno was willing to settle for gives them “a strategic blueprint for Suno’s settlement posture.”
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