1. Richard Kadrey, et al. v. Meta
Current Status: Chhabria “reluctantly granted” plaintiffs’ motion to amend their complaint. Anyone following this case will recall that Judge Chhabria has been critical of parties’ lawyers (see, for example, his indictment of Meta for discovery misconduct early in the case or his chiding of Plaintiffs for their failure to develop a factual basis for market dilution). However, this week’s order regarding Plaintiffs’ proposed Fourth Amended Complaint, which adds contributory infringement claims based on Meta’s uploading of torrented books, stands out.
Plaintiffs definitely got a “win,” but that rose came with a few thorns. Judge Chhabria believes Plaintiffs could have and should have brought their contributory infringement claims when they amended their complaint in late 2024, adding direct infringement claims based on Meta’s torrenting and associated seeding. He also was not persuaded by any of Plaintiffs’ arguments as to why they didn’t bring those claims back then. The Court cast Plaintiffs’ attempt to justify the delay as a “lame excuse” borne of Plaintiffs’ counsel being “so intent on bashing Meta that they are unable to exercise proper judgment.”
Despite the rebuke, the Court “reluctantly granted” the amendment. The reasoning was just as critical: “counsel has lucked into a situation where Meta will not be meaningfully prejudiced by the failure to add a contributory infringement claim back in November 2024.” Because of the recent relation of Entrepreneur Media v. Meta, Meta was going to have to litigate contributory infringement either way (Entrepreneur included those claims from the start). That, combined with the possibility of absent class members having their interests harmed by a poorly litigated suit on the part of the Kadrey class, caused the needle to swing toward permitting the amendment. As Judge Chhabria put it, it is conceivable that a class would be certified and then a jury would rule in favor of Meta “perhaps because class counsel is so busy bashing Meta at trial that it forgets to submit enough evidence to support a key element” leaving absent class members precluded from bringing the contributory infringement claim in subsequent litigation. To prevent this eventuality, the Court “reluctantly granted” the motion to file an Amended Complaint.
The way Chhabria sees it, Plaintiffs have already missed out on at least one major opportunity for victory already (by failing to develop a market dilution record) and have now narrowly avoided another lost opportunity. We’ll see if Plaintiffs will ultimately benefit from Chhabria’s patience.
2. Concord Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
Current Status: Plaintiffs file their motion for partial summary judgment! We’ve been waiting a long time for another high-profile case to proceed to summary judgment, and now it’s here. Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment argued two main points: (1) undisputed direct copyright infringement occurred, and (2) that Anthropic’s infringement was not fair use.
As to infringement, Plaintiffs relied on evidence that Anthropic’s Claude model was able to reproduce lyrics from Plaintiffs’ songs because lyrics were included in its training data. This issue appears unlikely to be the major decision point. Instead, like several other cases we’ve been following, “fair use” is likely to be the pivotal point. Arguing that Anthropic did not engage in fair use, Plaintiffs raised cases involving the copyrightability of works produced by AI, including the recent Thaler v. Perlmutter decision which determined that AI-produced works could not be copyrighted. The purpose of this background is to emphasize that copyright aims to preserve the economic viability of human creativity. With respect to the four fair use factors, Plaintiffs raised the following:
- Factor 1 (transformativeness) – Plaintiffs argued that, although Anthropic will claim that its models as a whole are transformative, this is the wrong question. Instead, they say that the question is how Plaintiffs lyrics, specifically, were used. With respect to the lyrics alone, they say, the use was merely to equip the models to regurgitate lyrics in an infringing manner.
- Factor 2 (nature of the work) – Plaintiffs’ argument here is short, referencing case law that supports song lyrics and musical composition being core focuses of copyright protection.
- Factor 3 (amount of the work used) – In another short argument, Plaintiffs note that the entirety of the lyrics for various songs were used for training. This is a tough argument for Plaintiffs because, while they are likely correct that entire lyrics were used, it is difficult to argue that this was unnecessary for the purpose of training an LLM, a process which notoriously uses a massive amount of resources (data and otherwise).
- Factor 4 (market impact) – For the final and (for some courts) most important factor, Plaintiffs compared Anthropic’s Claude to other online systems (such as Spotify and Genius.com) which pay licensing fees for their use of lyrics. Plaintiffs also directly invoked Judge Chhabria’s summary judgment opinion in Kadrey v. Meta to argue that market dilution harm resulted from Anthropic’s use. In support of this position, Plaintiffs made use of Anthropic’s own statistics that showed lyricists and writers using Claude to emulate musical and lyrical composition. This marks the first time that the market dilution theory has been seriously propounded after the Kadrey plaintiffs dropped the ball during their summary judgment phase.
This is the first brief in summary judgment for this case. Anthropic’s opposition/opening briefing is expected on April 20, Plaintiff’s opposition/reply on May 18, and Defendants’ reply briefing on June 8. The hearing is scheduled for July 8.
3. Reddit v. Anthropic
Current Status: The Court holds a hearing on Reddit’s motion for remand. The main dispute in this case is presently whether it should be removed to federal court from California state court. Last week, the Court issued a tentative order that would grant remand. The tentative order reasoned that each claim alleged by Reddit arose out of alleged contractual obligations and that they involved elements “qualitatively different from the rights protected by the Copyright Act.” This week, the Court held a hearing during which the parties argued their respective positions regarding remand, but no final order has yet been issued. We’ll see if the hearing changes the Court’s mind.
4. SDNY Multi-District Litigation
Current Status: Expert reports delayed, but still on the horizon. Although fact discovery officially closed on February 26, t discovery issues remain. Last week, the parties wrote to the Court to summarize the state of things. They estimated that the outstanding discovery issues were: a number of depositions, the production of additional data reservoirs as ordered by Magistrate Judge Wang, and a few pending motions before Judge Wang.
The parties also estimated that they would serve 35-40 expert reports next month. Given the outstanding discovery issues and the number of expert reports expected, the parties jointly requested that the expert report and MSJ deadlines be extended by two weeks, moving the deadline for opening reports from April 10 to April 24. This week, the Court granted that request.
5. Disney et al. v. MiniMax & Hailuo AI
Current Status: Schedule for motions to dismiss still in flux. Two weeks ago, the parties began preparing themselves for motions to dismiss with a joint request to extend time for briefing. The Court granted the request in part, setting a deadline for initial motions on April 24, with oppositions due May 8 and replies due May 15. The issue is set for hearing on May 29.
This week, the parties submitted another stipulation seeking to amend the briefing schedule. If adopted, the stipulation would require defendants’ initial motions on April 10, with Plaintiffs’ oppositions due May 1 and replies due May 15. The stipulation retained the May 29th hearing date.
6. Sony v. Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio)
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Following a number of settlements, recent weeks have seen few new filings. Late last year, Plaintiffs UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Atlantic Recording Corp., Rhino Entertainment Co., and Warner Music all filed stipulations of dismissal, leaving Sony Music Entertainment as the lone plaintiff in the case.
In the past few weeks, Sony submitted a supplemental filing in connection with Udio's pending motion to dismiss, citing a recent California decision (Cordova v. Huneault) where a court allowed a similar DMCA claim to proceed. Sony argues this case supports its claim that Udio illegally bypassed YouTube's security measures to download copyrighted music for AI training.
In response, Udio filed a letter in further support of its motion to dismiss, arguing the Cordova decision is not persuasive. Udio’s key argument is that Cordova is not applicable because it failed to address a critical distinction in the law—the difference between “access controls” (which cannot be bypassed) and “copy controls” (which can be freely circumvented). Udio contends that YouTube's “rolling cipher” technology is a copy-prevention measure, not an access-control measure, and therefore bypassing it is not illegal under the DMCA. Udio maintains that Sony’s DMCA claim should be dismissed with prejudice.
7. UMG Recordings v. Suno
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week was uneventful. Last week, the Court held a status conference between the parties, but no notable orders have resulted from that hearing yet.
8. Sarah Andersen et al. v. Stability AI, et al.
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. The last few weeks have largely been concerned with Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint rather than any discovery issues. As discussed last week, the parties filed joint letter briefing on a dispute. Plaintiffs have requested the names and associated usernames for all enterprise customers that Stability has. According to Plaintiffs, this information is pertinent to fair use because it could demonstrate lost business. Stability argues that it should not have to produce the requested names because any information about business lost by Plaintiffs should be in the possession of Plaintiffs. Stability offered a counterproposal: that Plaintiffs identify any customers or potential customers they think may have been affected and then they will “consider providing information regarding any such overlap.”
Plaintiffs appear to have the better side of the argument. The discovery in this case is under protective order, leaving Stability at no risk from providing the information requested, and the request is not particularly burdensome. Stability’s compromise offer also seems obstructionist on its face as it forces Plaintiffs to determine the very information they are seeking through discovery before Stability would have to “consider” providing a response.
9. Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. v. Midjourney
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week involved no significant new litigation events, however, two weeks ago, the parties requested a hearing regarding an informal discovery dispute. The Court held that hearing on March 12. The minutes provide some insight into the discovery issues currently being negotiated behind the scenes. Disney has requested a search of subscriber prompts to Midjourney, including those submitted in Midjourney’s “stealth mode.” The Court asked for an initial search to be done and hit counts provided so that the relative burden of prompt search requests could be evaluated. Disney is also seeking discovery into the development of Midjourney’s 3D modeling capabilities. Midjourney is currently seeking documents related to Disney’s own Generative AI development and its in-house use of such technologies.
Although this week did not significantly develop any of these issues, Midjourney filed a motion to compel the production of documents related to Disney’s internal use and development of generative AI services.
10. Hendrix v. Apple
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This week saw no significant new filings. Last year, the parties and the Court agreed to relate the present case to another case filed against Apple by Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknick. More recently, the Court accepted another request to relate a case by Tasha Alexander against Apple. Based on a hearing held last week, the Court appointed William Dreher from Keller Rohrback and Rohit Nath from Susman Godfrey as interim co-lead counsel. This appointment will be in effect for one year, through the end of January 2027, with reappointment submissions scheduled for the last Friday of December.
Earlier in February, the parties filed an amended complaint which included additional factual allegations regarding the ways in which Apple integrates its models into its products and the manner in which these models have impaired the market for Plaintiffs’ works. These later additions are likely setup for exactly the argument that Kadrey’s Judge Chhabria suggested the plaintiffs in that case should have made to overcome the fair use defense raised by Meta. In particular, the Hendrix class members discuss the manner in which generative AI outputs compete with human authors’ work product based on a 2025 working paper.