The Legal Standard: Fair Use Under Fire
Suno’s apparent reliance on fair use as a defense is a central battleground in the case. The complaint quotes leading case law, including Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 448 (1984), and Andy Warhol Found. for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 598 U.S. 508, 528 (2023), to argue that fair use is unlikely to shield Suno’s large-scale, commercial exploitation of copyrighted works.
The four statutory fair use factors—purpose and character, nature of the work, amount/substantiality, and market effect (17 U.S.C. § 107)—are cited and analyzed at length in the complaint:
Purpose and character: Suno’s use is “quintessentially commercial” and “designed to imitate and substitute for genuine human recordings.”
Nature of the work: Plaintiffs’ sound recordings are “at the core of copyright protection.”
Amount and substantiality: Suno is accused of copying “the most important parts of the protected sound recordings,” including “hooks” and “choruses.”
Market effect: The AI outputs directly compete with the originals, potentially “eliminating the existing market for licensing sound recordings.”
In short, the complaint contends, none of the fair use factors favor Suno.
