Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, along with internet service provider Altice USA have jointly asked a federal court in Texas to give them more time to file a status report in their long-running copyright lawsuit.
The case has been put on hold since August 2025, pending the Supreme Court’s decision on Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, which was a nearly similar case where music rightsholders accuse an ISP of turning a blind eye to music piracy on their networks.
In a landmark decision on March 25, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Cox v. Sony Music that ISPs 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 — meaning a service not capable of substantial noninfringing uses.
On Monday (April 6), the labels and Altice filed a joint motion, seeking for a 14-day extension to submit a status report to the court. The new deadline falls on April 22.
“The Parties met and conferred on April 2, 2026, but would benefit from additional time to analyze the Cox decision and confer with their respective clients before submitting a status report to the Court. The Parties therefore respectfully request a 14-day extension of time to file the status report with this Court to comply with the Order, to and including April 22, 2026,” according to the joint motion, which you can read here.
The case has been stuck in limbo since at least August 2025 when jury selection was cancelled amid the Cox v. Sony developments.
Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group sued Altice in December 2023, accusing it of “knowingly contribut[ing] to, and reap[ing] substantial profits from, massive copyright infringement committed by thousands of its subscribers.” Altice owns the Optimum broadband and cable brand.
“The Parties met and conferred on April 2, 2026, but would benefit from additional time to analyze the Cox decision and confer with their respective clients before submitting a status report to the Court.”
Joint Motion by SonY Music, Warner Music and Altice
The complaint listed in its Exhibit A and Exhibit B attachments over 6,700 sound recordings and 4,000 compositions respectively that were allegedly infringed by Altice subscribers using the BitTorrent protocol between 2020 and 2023.
The lawsuit cited the maximum statutory fine of $150,000 per alleged violation, implying that damages sought by the music companies from Altice USA could exceed USD $1.6 billion.
Sony and Warner’s complaint came a year after Altice was also hit with a $1-billion lawsuit on behalf of music rightsholders including Universal Music Group, BMG, and Concord Music Group, who sought to have the internet provider held accountable for “millions” of alleged infringements of “thousands” of their songs.
Altice settled that lawsuit in August 2024 and the court dismissed the case “with prejudice,” ensuring it will never be reopened.
The latest development comes as the Cox v. Sony ruling set a new precedent that shielded ISPs from copyright owners’ infringement lawsuits. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote: “Under 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.”
The same precedent prompted the Supreme Court on Monday to vacate a lower court ruling that ordered internet provider Grande Communications to pay $46.7 million in damages to a group of record labels for infringement in November 2022.
Grande Communications, a Texas-based subsidiary of Astound Business Solutions, filed for its petition for certiorari, or a review of a lower court’s decision, after losing its copyright infringement case against a group of record labels in 2022.
The company 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 “theft” of copyrights, according to the original complaint, which you can read here.
The court sided with the copyright owners in 2022, and awarded them $46.7 million in damages. In 2023, the trial court denied Grande’s motion and by October 2024, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the liability finding, prompting Grande to file for a petition for certiorari.
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.
Beyond Altice and Grande, the Cox v. Sony ruling also prompted Elon Musk’s X Corp to argue that music publishers’ long-running copyright infringement case against the platform should be thrown out.
In a court filing obtained by MBW, dated March 27 — just two days after the Cox decision was handed down — X’s lawyers told the Nashville federal court that “under Cox, the liability theories that survived X’s motion to dismiss fail as a matter of law.”
Elsewhere, record labels Sony, Universal, Warner and ABKCO Music also filed a $2.6 billion lawsuit against Verizon in 2024 over similar allegations.
Aside from ISPs, Meta recently invoked the Cox ruling in its latest summary judgment filing against Epidemic Sound. Epidemic Sound filed a second copyright infringement lawsuit against the Facebook parent in December, alleging that the tech giant continues to infringe the music company’s catalog across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Epidemic filed its first lawsuit against Meta in July 2022, which remains active before Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in the same court. That case sought at least $142 million in damages.
Music Business Worldwide
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