Snapchat’s parent company Snap has been building relationships – including licensing deals – with a range of music industry entities in recent years. However, Swiss / Liechtensteinian collecting society SUISA isn’t one of them, and now it’s suing the company alleging copyright infringement.
The lawsuit has been filed in the Hamburg District Court, and it claims that the PRO’s SUISA Digital subsidiary has made “repeated attempts to licence Snapchat for almost two years” without success.
“Snap’s stance is that it does not use any songs from SUISA Digital’s repertoire. This statement is false. A large number of works in SUISA Digital’s repertoire is available on the Snapchat platform and is used by users without Snap having acquired a licence from SUISA Digital,” was the PRO’s summary of the situation.
US collecting society SESAC, which runs a joint venture with SUISA, is backing the legal action. Snap has yet to comment, but SUISA has published some background material on its claims here.
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