{"id":254779,"date":"2026-04-08T11:23:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=254779"},"modified":"2026-04-08T11:23:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:23:05","slug":"after-cox-ruling-supreme-court-wipes-out-grande-communications-47m-music-piracy-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/after-cox-ruling-supreme-court-wipes-out-grande-communications-47m-music-piracy-verdict\/","title":{"rendered":"After Cox ruling, Supreme Court wipes out Grande Communications\u2019 $47M music piracy verdict"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court on Monday (April 6) vacated a lower court ruling that ordered<\/a> internet provider Grande Communications to pay $46.7 million in damages to a group of record labels for infringement in November 2022.<\/p>\n

The highest court in the US wrote<\/a>: \u201cThe petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for further consideration in light of Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment.<\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision comes as \u00a0the Supreme Court last month\u00a0ruled unanimously<\/a>\u00a0in Cox v.\u00a0Sony Music\u00a0that 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

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In 2019, a jury in Virginia\u00a0found Cox guilty<\/a>\u00a0of indirect copyright infringement carried out by its users. It awarded damages of\u00a0$99,830.29<\/b>\u00a0for each of\u00a010,017<\/b>\u00a0infringed musical works, amounting to slightly over\u00a0$1 billion<\/b>.<\/p>\n

However, in early 2024, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals\u00a0partially overturned that verdict<\/a>, deciding that Cox couldn\u2019t be held liable for \u201cvicarious\u201d copyright infringement, because it wasn\u2019t proven that the company directly profited from its subscribers\u2019 piracy.<\/p>\n

Cox then filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court in August 2024, and by June 2025, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for further consideration in light of Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment.<\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n

Supreme Court<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Following the landmark ruling on Cox v. Sony, handed down on March 25, Grande<\/b> Communications<\/b>, a Texas-based subsidiary of Astound Business Solutions<\/b>, filed for its petition for certiorari, or a review of a lower court\u2019s decision, after losing its copyright infringement case against a group of record labels in 2022.<\/p>\n

When the ruling was handed down in 2022, the RIAA said the court found the company to be liable for \u201cwillful infringement of 1,403<\/b> copyrighted sound recordings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The RIAA\u00a0noted in its press release at the time that under federal law, internet providers are not allowed to be \u201cwillfully blind to online piracy on their networks\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, in the latest ruling in favor of Cox in its Sony case, Justice Clarence<\/b> Thomas<\/b> wrote<\/a>: \u201cUnder our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In 2023, the trial court denied<\/a> Grande\u2019s motion and by October 2024, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld<\/a> the liability finding, prompting Grande to file for a petition for certiorari<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Grande was sued by the major labels in 2017, alleging it ignored years of infringement notices and took no meaningful action to discourage what they describe as \u201ctheft\u201d of copyrights, according to the original complaint, which you can read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court’s latest order vacated the 2022 judgment and remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit for reconsideration in light of Cox v. Sony Music.<\/p>\n

The Cox v. Sony ruling is expected to ripple beyond Grande. Elon Musk\u2019s X Corp<\/b> has already cited the decision<\/a> to argue that music publishers\u2019 long-running copyright infringement case against the platform should be thrown out.<\/p>\n

In a court filing obtained by MBW, dated March 27 \u2014 just two days after the Cox decision was handed down \u2014 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

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X has requested a status conference with the court and signaled its intention to file a motion for judgment on the pleadings, arguing that the Supreme Court\u2019s new legal standard renders the publishers\u2019 surviving claims defunct.<\/p>\n

Aside from Grande, record labels Sony, Universal, Warner <\/b>and ABKCO Music<\/b> also filed<\/a> a $2.6 billion<\/b> lawsuit against Verizon<\/b> in 2024 over similar allegations.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Meta<\/b> recently invoked<\/a> the Cox ruling in its latest summary judgment filing against Epidemic<\/b> Sound<\/b>. Epidemic Sound filed a second copyright infringement lawsuit<\/a> against the Facebook parent in December, alleging that the tech giant continues to infringe the music company\u2019s catalog across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.<\/p>\n

Epidemic filed its\u00a0first lawsuit against Meta in July 2022,<\/a>\u00a0which remains active before Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in the same court. That case sought at least $142 million<\/b> in damages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court vacated the 2022 judgment and remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit for reconsideration in light of Cox v. Sony Music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":235063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[135202,105756,135201,3351],"class_list":["post-254779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-astound-business-solutions","tag-cox-communications","tag-grande-communications","tag-sony-music-entertainment"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254779","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=254779"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254801,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254779\/revisions\/254801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}