Catalog company AKBCO says its recent court victory over unlicensed music in classic rock documentaries provides key clarity on the limits of “fair use,” a hot-button issue in the AI-focused copyright conversation of 2026.
On Wednesday (Feb. 4), a New York federal judge held filmmaker Robert Carruthers and his company Coda Publishing liable for infringing 80 songs owned by ABKCO and Universal Music Group (UMG) in documentaries about The Rolling Stones, ABBA, U2, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
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Carruthers had argued that the critical commentary included in the documentaries renders them fair use — a tenet of copyright law that allows unlicensed works to repurposed for “transformative” creations. But Judge Katherine Polk Failla said simply getting a few critics to juxtapose “hot takes” next to reproduced videos does not “in any way transform the songs about which they are speaking.”
In a statement shared exclusively with Billboard on Monday (Feb. 9), ABKCO general counsel William A. Pittenger said, “We applaud the court’s finding of willful copyright infringement by Coda and the individuals involved in exploiting the unauthorized ‘documentary’ films. The decision further clarifies the limits of ‘fair use’ and protects artists, songwriters and copyright holders from those who would attempt to use ‘fair use’ as a cloak for their infringing acts.”
Fair use is a big deal in copyright law right now because of artificial intelligence. Across dozens of lawsuits across the country, technology developers have argued that the “transformative” nature of AI makes it fair use for them to train models on existing work without paying for licenses.
ABKCO and UMG’s publishing arm, Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), are currently fighting this AI fair use theory in copyright litigation against Anthropic, the maker of the chatbot Claude. UMG and the other major record labels also teamed up in 2024 to sue AI music services Suno and Udio over unlicensed training, and that litigation remains pending even as the AI firms have reached settlements with some of the major labels.
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The rock documentary case, meanwhile, dates back to 2020. ABKCO owns songs from The Rolling Stones’ catalog, while UMG controls various rights to the music of ABBA, U2, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
ABKCO and UMG alleged in the lawsuit that the audio heard in ten of Carruthers’ classic rock documentaries infringed their rights to valuable music, including chart-toppers like “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Dancing Queen” and “Crocodile Rock.”
Judge Failla agreed that this argument was correct for all but one of the songs named in the lawsuit: the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ cover of the Stevie Wonder song “Higher Ground,” which is only heard in a live performance in Carruthers’ documentary and therefore does not affect UMG’s master recording rights.
Now that the judge has rejected Carruthers’ fair use defense and granted judgment in favor of ABKCO and UMG, further litigation will ensue to determine what kind of financial damages are owed. Judge Failla has ruled that Carruthers’ infringement was willful, which could entitle the music companies to enhanced damages.
Carruthers, who is no longer represented by a lawyer, did not return a request for comment.
