{"id":233818,"date":"2025-06-16T20:21:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T19:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=233818"},"modified":"2025-06-16T20:21:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T19:21:14","slug":"music-publishers-and-elon-musks-x-granted-90-day-pause-to-copyright-lawsuit-for-good-faith-negotiations-to-try-to-settle-out-of-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/music-publishers-and-elon-musks-x-granted-90-day-pause-to-copyright-lawsuit-for-good-faith-negotiations-to-try-to-settle-out-of-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Music publishers and Elon Musk\u2019s X granted 90 day pause to copyright lawsuit for ‘good faith negotiations’ to try to settle out of court"},"content":{"rendered":"

The many music publishers who sued Elon Musk\u2019s X over alleged copyright infringement are aiming to settle the matter out of court.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to an order for a stay of proceedings filed by the court on Wednesday (June 11), and obtained by MBW.<\/p>\n

According to the order, the judge has temporarily frozen all legal proceedings in this case for 90<\/strong> days after both parties jointly requested the pause to try to settle the dispute outside of court.<\/p>\n

An NMPA spokesperson told MBW on Monday (June 16) that \u201cthe intent of the stay is to discuss with X the resolution of the suit and proper compensation to songwriters and publishers for past unlicensed uses, while providing an opportunity for go forward licensing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A petition for a stay of proceedings was filed jointly by the publishers and X Corp<\/strong> on June 6 in a Tennessee federal court, where the legal showdown between the music companies and the platform formerly known as Twitter has been running for the past two years.<\/p>\n

The music publishers and X Corp \u201chave determined to engage in good-faith efforts to fully and amicably resolve this lawsuit,\u201d stated the joint motion, which can be read in full here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cGranting a 90-day stay may facilitate an orderly and negotiated resolution, and thus further the interest of judicial efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the order granted on Wednesday, which you can see here,<\/a>\u00a0“if the discussions result in a resolution, the Parties will promptly file an appropriate dismissal with the Court”.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intent of the stay is to discuss with X the resolution of the suit and proper compensation to songwriters and publishers for past unlicensed uses, while providing an opportunity for go forward licensing.\u201d<\/p>\n

NMPA spokesperson<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It added: “If the Parties\u2019 discussions are not successful, the Parties will promptly notify the Court. If discussions remain productive, but a resolution has not been reached within 90 days, the Parties may jointly request a further extension.”<\/p>\n

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Numerous music publishers, including Sony Music Publishing<\/strong>, Universal Music Publishing Group<\/strong>, and Warner Chappell Music<\/strong>, sued X Corp<\/a> in June 2023, alleging \u201crampant infringement of copyrighted music\u201d on X.<\/p>\n

Joining the three major publishers in the lawsuit are Downtown Music<\/strong>, Hipgnosis Songs Group<\/strong>, Kobalt<\/strong>, peermusic<\/strong>, Reservoir Media<\/strong>, and others.<\/p>\n

The initial complaint sought more than $250 million<\/strong> in damages for \u201chundreds of thousands\u201d of alleged infringements of approximately 1,700<\/strong> works.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwitter fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical compositions, violating Publishers\u2019 and others\u2019 exclusive rights under copyright law,\u201d the publishers\u2019 complaint stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwitter knows full well that music is leaked, launched, and streamed by billions of people every day on its platform. No longer can it hide behind the DMCA and refuse to pay songwriters and music publishers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is a US law that gives internet platforms immunity from copyright liability, provided the platform makes an effort to remove flagged content.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwitter stands alone as the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service,\u201d National Music Publishers Association<\/strong> (NMPA<\/strong>) President and CEO David Israelite<\/strong> said at the time.<\/p>\n

In March 2024, per court documents, Judge Aleta Trauger<\/strong> of the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee partially granted X Corp\u2019s motion to dismiss the case, throwing out charges of direct, vicarious, and contributory copyright infringement.<\/p>\n

However, the judge allowed the case to go forward on three other allegations: That X provided \u201cmore lenient copyright enforcement to \u2018verified users;\u2019 that it failed to take down infringing materials \u201cin a timely manner;\u201d and that it \u201cfailed to take reasonable steps in response to severe serial infringers.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The joint move by the publishers and X to attempt an out-of-court settlement comes in the wake of an escalating dispute over X Corp\u2019s request for access to documents from the NMPA, which is not a plaintiff in the case but \u2013 according to X Corp\u2019s lawyers \u2013 helped coordinate the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

On May 30, X Corp\u2019s lawyers asked a federal court in the District of Columbia to compel the NMPA to hand over documents related to the case held by Israelite. The documents evidently relate to a copyright infringement notification program developed by the NMPA, among other things.<\/p>\n

A court filing<\/a> shows that on Monday (June 9), X Corp withdrew the motion to compel, but reserved \u201call rights to refile based on the result of the parties\u2019 good-faith efforts to fully and amicably resolve their dispute.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Publishers ‘to discuss with X the resolution of the suit and proper compensation to songwriters and publishers for past unlicensed uses, while providing an opportunity for go forward licensing,’ says NMPA spokesperson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":234178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2142,3611,130651,134146,2141,946,134305],"class_list":["post-233818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-david-israelite","tag-elon-musk","tag-lawsuit","tag-music-publishers","tag-nmpa","tag-twitter","tag-x-corp"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233818","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\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}