{"id":254698,"date":"2026-04-07T08:56:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T07:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=254698"},"modified":"2026-04-07T08:56:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T07:56:46","slug":"music-publishers-tell-judge-xs-antitrust-lawsuit-is-retaliation-against-their-2023-copyright-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/music-publishers-tell-judge-xs-antitrust-lawsuit-is-retaliation-against-their-2023-copyright-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Music publishers tell judge X\u2019s antitrust lawsuit is \u2018retaliation’ against their 2023 copyright lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Music publishers asked a federal judge in Dallas on Thursday to dismiss X Corp’s antitrust lawsuit with prejudice, calling it a “retaliatory” lawsuit by Elon Musk’s platform against copyright owners who sued<\/a> it nearly three years ago for streaming roughly 1,700 songs without licenses.<\/p>\n

X sued<\/a> the National Music Publishers’ Association<\/b> and 18 publishers in federal court in Dallas in January, alleging a \u201cgroup boycott\u201d to force the platform into\u00a0industrywide licensing at inflated rates.<\/p>\n

On Thursday (April 2), the publishers asked a federal judge in the same court to throw out X\u2019s claims, with prejudice, calling the complaint a \u201cretaliatory antitrust suit\u201d against copyright owners.<\/p>\n

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The publishers\u2019 motion comes as X recently filed a separate argument<\/a> in the Nashville federal court based on a new unanimous Supreme Court ruling in Cox Communications, Inc. <\/b>v.\u00a0Sony Music Entertainment<\/b>. According to that March ruling, internet service providers cannot be held liable for copyright infringement committed by their users, unless the provider actively induced the infringement or provided a service tailored to that infringement \u2014 meaning a service not capable of substantial noninfringing uses.<\/p>\n

Two days after the decision was handed down, X\u2019s lawyers told the Nashville federal court that \u201cunder Cox, the liability theories that survived X\u2019s motion to dismiss fail as a matter of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most recently, the publishers’ 56-page dismissal brief filed in Dallas, which you can read in full here<\/a>, said: \u201cX\u2019s motivation in filing suit was different: retaliation and leverage for the copyright suit the Music Publishers filed against it, which is currently pending in Tennessee federal court. The Complaint should be dismissed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tennessee case that they were referring to was filed in June 2023 when a group of music publishers \u2014 including Sony Music Publishing<\/b>, Universal Music Publishing Group<\/b>, and Warner Chappell Music<\/b>, alongside independents such as Kobalt<\/b>, BMG<\/b>, Concord<\/b>, and Reservoir<\/b> \u2014 sued X<\/a> (then still known as Twitter) for alleged widespread infringement of around 1,700<\/b> copyrighted works, seeking more than $250 million<\/b> in damages.<\/p>\n

As MBW previously reported, that lawsuit, which was led by the NMPA, accused X of profiting from unlicensed music while refusing to enter into the kind of blanket licensing agreements that virtually every other major social media platform \u2014 including Meta<\/b>, TikTok<\/b>, YouTube<\/b>, and Snapchat<\/b> \u2014 has signed with music rights holders.<\/p>\n

A Nashville federal judge\u00a0in March 2024 partially granted X\u2019s motion to dismiss but allowed the case to proceed on allegations including that X failed to promptly remove infringing content and neglected to act against repeat offenders.<\/p>\n

In June 2025, as\u00a0MBW reported, the two sides were granted a\u00a090-day stay of proceedings<\/a>\u00a0to engage in settlement negotiations. By November, both parties reported making substantial progress toward a written settlement agreement.<\/p>\n

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However, the negotiations failed through and in January, instead of reaching a settlement, X\u00a0filed an antitrust countersuit<\/a>\u00a0against the NMPA and 18 publishers in January, accusing them of colluding to force the platform into industrywide licensing at inflated rates.<\/p>\n

In the latest brief, the publishers said X filed its retaliatory lawsuit as the company was \u201c[a]pparently unwilling to obtain licenses, or abide by its obligations under the DMCA.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cX does not identify a single instance where it sought an individual license and a Music Publisher denied that request, or where a Music Publisher (or NMPA) insisted on an industrywide license.\u201d<\/p>\n

NMPA’s Brief<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

X has accused the music publishers of engaging in a conspiracy to refuse to engage with X to license their copyrighted music. However, the publishers said: \u201cX does not identify a single instance where it sought an individual license and a Music Publisher denied that request, or where a Music Publisher (or NMPA) insisted on an industrywide license.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the publishers, X\u2019s conspiracy theory centers on a single word in a single pre-litigation email sent by the NMPA to X in October 2021. At the time, NMPA President David<\/b> Israelite<\/b> wrote to the then Twitter platform, warning of DMCA takedown notices while offering to “develop a partnership, \u201csimilar to what many other social media companies have done, including YouTube<\/b>, Facebook<\/b>, Instagram<\/b>, TikTok<\/b>, Snap<\/b>, Twitch<\/b>, Triller<\/b>, Roblox<\/b>, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cX admits that it \u2018is not interested in licensing musical compositions from every Music Publisher.\u2019 X never identifies the Music Publishers with which it is interested in entering into a license agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

NMPA’s Brief<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Israelite\u2019s letter closed with an invitation: \u201cIf you are interested in engaging in such a conversation, please let me know. If you choose not to do so, then please know we<\/i> are open to starting a conversation at any point during the future process.\u201d<\/p>\n

X’s complaint seizes on the word “we,” arguing it was a signal that no individual publisher would deal separately with X, according to the publisher\u2019s latest brief. The defendants call that interference “not only implausible” but “completely devoid of factual basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The publishers also argued that X\u2019s complaint pleads the opposite of what it alleges. Warner Chappell Music<\/b> allegedly sent X an initial \u201cexperimental license proposal\u201d in May 2021 and followed up 10 months later, noting that X \u201chad been negotiating licenses with record labels\u201d but not publishers.\u201d The publishers noted that licenses from both are required to lawfully use music.<\/p>\n

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Sony Music Publishing <\/b>and Universal Music Publishing <\/b>also allegedly attempted to open licensing negotiations with X. However, the publishers said all three were rebuffed. \u201c[A]ll X\u2019s allegations show are unilateral attempts by Warner to engage in licensing negotiations, only to be rebuffed by X.\u201d<\/p>\n

The publishers added that \u201cX admits that it \u2018is not interested in licensing musical compositions from every Music Publisher.\u2019 X never identifies the Music Publishers with which it is interested in entering into a license agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt only alleges its own failure to negotiate with Warner. X does not allege it sought an individual license from any Music Publisher and was rejected. Nor does it allege any refusal by any Music Publisher to engage in licensing discussions or any actual demand by any Publisher (or NMPA) to enter an industry-wide license agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cX does not allege that any single Music Publisher has the power to control prices or exclude competition. It does not even allege any single Music Publisher\u2019s market share.\u201d<\/p>\n

NMPA’s Brief<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The publishers cited five grounds for dismissal including arguing that X never suffered antitrust injury because the music publishers are not X’s competitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo establish antitrust injury, a plaintiff must plead injury \u2018of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent and that flows from that which makes defendants\u2019 acts unlawful\u2019,\u201d the publishers\u2019 legal team wrote.<\/p>\n

A boycott claim requires a competitor like Facebook<\/b>, Instagram<\/b> or TikTok<\/b> conspiring with publishers to cut X off from having music licenses. \u201cX alleges no such thing. Nor could it,\u201d according to the publishers\u2019 brief.<\/p>\n

The publishers also alleged that X\u2019s monopolization claims fail because X does not allege that any single publisher has monopoly power and that it only alleges collective market share.<\/p>\n

\u201cX does not allege that any single Music Publisher has the power to control prices or exclude competition. It does not even allege any single Music Publisher\u2019s market share.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The publishers claim X never attempted to secure an individual license and that X cannot cite an example of a music publisher rejecting such a request.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":161370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[188,1388,3611,339,5041,2854,129093,648,5702,130974],"class_list":["post-254698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-bmg","tag-concord","tag-elon-musk","tag-kobalt","tag-national-music-publishers-association","tag-reservoir","tag-sony-music-publishing","tag-universal-music-publishing-group","tag-warner-chappell-music","tag-x"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254698"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254709,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254698\/revisions\/254709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}