Elvis rightsholders want $202M from Suno, Eminem’s publisher $47.7M

Two separate lawsuits landed on Suno on November 6. One comes from the owners of Elvis Presley’s likeness and of publishing rights in many of his best-known songs. The other comes from Eight Mile Style, which co-publishes hundreds of Eminem songs. Both were filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, and together they plead roughly $250 million in damages, Music Business Worldwide reported.

The Presley plaintiffs include Elvis Presley Enterprises and ABG EPE IP, both controlled by Authentic Brands Group, plus Raleigh Music Publishing, Abilene Music, trusts and individual rightsholders. Their figures add up to just over $202 million, before any tripling or punitive damages.

The Presley complaint

The biggest line is $128.85 million in statutory copyright damages across 859 compositions, including hundreds associated with other artists. That applies the legal maximum of $150,000 per song for willful infringement. The plaintiffs add $2,147,500 for allegedly bypassing access controls and $21.475 million for allegedly stripping songwriter and publisher credits. Elvis Presley Enterprises, which the complaint says solely owns Presley’s likeness rights, also seeks damages “believed to exceed $50 million” for use of his voice and likeness. It pleads that figure twice, under two Tennessee claims, and the $202 million total counts it once.

The complaint alleges that Suno trained on Presley’s recordings and now lets users generate new songs in a voice listeners recognize as his. “Suno has stolen Elvis’ voice, his image, and likeness … as well as his copyrighted works on, literally, a breathtaking scale, and must now be called to answer for its theft,” the filing states.

The plaintiffs cite at least 17 outputs that they say reproduce songs they control, including Can’t Help Falling in Love and the Chubby Checker hit Let’s Twist Again. They say they found at least 38 outputs using Presley’s voice or likeness. “Those examples … are NOT examples of Elvis Presley singing,” the complaint states, adding that “there are hundreds to thousands more like it.”

The suit leans partly on Tennessee’s ELVIS Act, short for Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security. According to the complaint, the state asked Presley’s rightsholders for permission before naming the law after him. Elvis Presley Enterprises wants triple damages under the act, plus punitive damages under Tennessee common law. Its case for tripling rests on Presley’s US Army service from 1958 to 1960, which it says makes him a “member of the armed forces” under state law. It also wants a court order barring Suno from using his voice or likeness.

The complaint takes direct aim at what Suno told a Boston judge. On November 3, Suno asked that court to dismiss a proposed class action brought by Jason Isbell and three other musicians. Suno’s filing said its outputs “do not replicate the auditory characteristics of any real artist’s voice to the point that someone would confuse a Suno creation with one actually sung by a particular famous musician.” Quoting an August blog post by co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman, it also said Suno has “never allowed prompts for specific artists or copyrighted songs.”

“These statements are unequivocally false, and Plaintiffs have concrete proof of the exact opposite of Suno’s claims,” the Presley complaint responds. It says that as recently as October 7, Suno generated two tracks titled He Is Still The King from lyrics alone, with no style prompt. The lyrics spelled out Presley’s name with spaces between the letters and referred to rockabilly. Each output, the complaint says, “contained a copy of Elvis’ unmistakable and iconic voice singing over a rockabilly-style generated track.” Spacing out a name is also the workaround alleged in the Isbell case, where Suno’s motion called such prompts “atypical requests.”

The Eight Mile Style complaint

Eight Mile Style sued alongside Martin Affiliated. It says it owns and administers the 269 Eminem compositions at issue. Eminem himself is not a plaintiff.

Its pleaded figures come to just over $47.7 million: $40.35 million in statutory copyright damages, $672,500 for allegedly bypassing access controls and $6.725 million for allegedly stripping credits.

The complaint says a Suno track titled Lose Yourself By Eminem, created for a user, “copies, verbatim, the lyrics” of the original. It makes similar allegations about outputs of ‘Till I Collapse, The Real Slim Shady, Houdini and Ass Like That. It also cites leaked Suno source code, which it says contains 4,210 characters of Lose Yourself lyrics saved from a scrape of Genius.

Like the Presley suit, it alleges that Suno’s filter on prompts naming artists is easily bypassed. It points to a third-party service, HookGenius, which it says sells a $29 “Suno Mastery Guide” for creating “Eminem-style prompts for Suno.” It further alleges that Suno has given commissioned referral links to content creators, including one whose YouTube tutorial shows users how to get around the filter. “Suno is paying people to teach others how to get around its own guardrails in order to drive traffic and purchases of paid subscriptions,” the complaint states.

Both complaints also accuse Suno of bypassing streaming services’ access controls to copy music, and of stripping credits from the files it collected. Both use the same line: “Suno’s business model was admittedly and clearly: infringe now, make billions by being the first mover, and try to settle on the cheap later.” Each asks that Suno hand over all unauthorized copies of the songs for impoundment or destruction, “including copies retained in training datasets, internal repositories, model weights, and server infrastructure.”

Suno’s response and the other cases

A Suno spokesperson said in a statement: “Suno exists to help people create new, original music, not to trade on anyone’s name or likeness, and we prohibit any unauthorized use of an artist’s work.” The company says it does not allow prompts for specific artists’ names and songs, and works with third-party providers to screen uploaded audio and lyrics.

In its October 20 answer to the second suit from Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, though, Suno admitted it “previously prevented users from submitting prompts containing artist names, and that as of January 2026, users may include artist names in their prompts.” It denied that such prompts generate outputs “without first converting the artist name to a style description.”

Both new suits were filed by Richard S. Busch of Adams & Reese, who won the Blurred Lines case for Marvin Gaye’s family while at King & Ballow. His team sued Suno and Anthropic for Round Hill Music on August 17, sued Suno for Gerencia 360 Music on August 31, and sued both companies again for Reservoir on October 21. Reservoir’s complaint against Suno covers 1,050 compositions and used the same “infringe now” line. On October 23, many of the Presley plaintiffs, led by ABG EPE IP, sued Anthropic over the lyrics of 274 songs. Anthropic said it disagreed with the claims and intends to defend the case.

Eight Mile Style is also suing Meta over 243 compositions. A federal judge narrowed that case in June, letting only the direct infringement claim proceed.

Both complaints cite Suno’s loss in Germany, where a Munich court ruled in July that it had infringed copyrights in songs represented by collecting society GEMA. Suno said it disagreed and was evaluating its options, including an appeal. The company raised more than $400 million at a $5.4 billion valuation in June. Warner Music Group settled with Suno and signed a licensing deal in November 2025. UMG and Sony are still suing.

In the Isbell case, Suno argues that the Tennessee claim fails because Isbell has not alleged that Suno used his voice. The plaintiffs’ response is due December 1.