The record industry’s $2.6 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Verizon is over. A joint stipulation of dismissal filed Wednesday (April 22) in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ends the case with prejudice, meaning the claims cannot be refiled, with each side bearing its own costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees. The dismissal was filed jointly by UMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and ABKCO, the same coalition that brought the original complaint in July 2024. No settlement payment was involved. The case simply ran into a Supreme Court ruling that made its central legal theory untenable.
That ruling was Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, decided unanimously on March 25, 2026. The Court ruled that 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. TicketNews Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas established that contributory copyright liability requires proof of intent, and that intent can only be demonstrated in one of two ways: either the provider actively induced infringement by promoting its service as a piracy tool, or the service itself is specifically tailored to infringement with no substantial lawful use. General-purpose internet service, even when provided to known repeat infringers, does not meet that standard.
The Verizon case had been built on exactly the legal theory the Supreme Court rejected. The original complaint alleged that the labels had sent Verizon more than 340,000 copyright infringement notices since early 2020, identifying subscribers using Verizon’s network to distribute copyrighted recordings via BitTorrent. Over 500 subscribers had been the subject of 100 or more individual notices, with one subscriber alone accumulating 4,450. The labels argued that Verizon’s continued service to those subscribers, despite explicit notice of the infringement, made it liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. The complaint listed 17,335 allegedly infringed works and sought up to $150,000 in statutory damages per work, implying total exposure above $2.6 billion. The case had been paused since August 2025, awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision in Cox. Billboard Philippines Once that decision landed, the math changed entirely.
The Verizon dismissal arrived alongside a parallel filing in Texas federal court, where Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment jointly dismissed their separate copyright lawsuit against ISP Altice USA under the same circumstances. Billboard Philippines The Altice case had sought damages potentially exceeding $1.6 billion based on over 6,700 allegedly infringed sound recordings and 4,000 compositions. The simultaneous dismissals of both cases represent the most concrete sign yet that the major labels have accepted the post-Cox landscape as unfavorable terrain for ISP contributory liability litigation, at least under the legal framework that had been the industry standard before the ruling.
