Canadian music rights organization SOCAN has filed a lawsuit against AI music generator Suno in the Federal Court of Canada. The action claims Suno copied copyright-protected music to train its AI models without permission or licensing.
What began as a US-focused legal battle between major labels and AI companies has spread well beyond American courts. Suno now fights on several fronts at once. In Germany, the Munich Regional Court ruled in July that the company infringed GEMA-represented works, and Suno is appealing. Artist David Lowery and Latin label Gerencia 360 filed separate US actions on 1 September, a day before SOCAN went to court in Canada.
Canadian law makes this a different fight from the American one. Canada relies on a fair dealing framework built around enumerated purposes. It does not offer the broad, open-ended fair use defence that tech companies lean on in US courts.
Representing more than 185,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers, SOCAN argues that Suno scraped protected catalogs without paying creators. The organization is asking the court for financial damages and an injunction to stop further unauthorized use of its music, stating that tech innovation cannot come at the expense of human artists.
The lawsuit adds to mounting legal pressure against Suno as courts examine how generative platforms source their training data. With Canadian rights holders demanding direct licensing agreements, the case could push AI developers toward formal compensation models across the music industry.
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