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Judge Saylor lets independent artists' class claims against Suno for infringing outputs and YouTube stream-ripping go forward, dismissing only a Tennessee consumer-protection count

In the proposed class action brought by independent recording artist Anthony Justice and his label, Judge Saylor on Aug. 20, 2026 denied Suno's motion to dismiss the derivative-works claim under 17 U.S.C. 106(2) and the anti-circumvention claim under 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1), and granted it only as to a Tennessee Consumer Protection Act count. Suno argued the artists had not identified any Suno output substantially similar to their songs. The court held there is no categorical rule that a plaintiff must produce the infringing work at the pleading stage: the complaint's roughly 100 examples of Suno outputs that replicate or closely resemble other owners' songs, its allegation that Suno built its model to mirror the songs it trained on, and the CEO's reported comments about replicating real artists' vocals make it plausible that similar outputs of the plaintiffs' works exist. On the DMCA claim, the court followed its Aug. 18 order in the labels' case: allegations that Suno bypassed YouTube's rolling cipher plausibly plead circumvention of an access control. The state-law count was dismissed because the artists tried to recast it in their opposition brief, not by amendment.