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Photo Credit: Muhammad Asyfaul
Moments after failing to dismiss Eight Mile Style’s copyright lawsuit, Meta has officially moved to toss a different $100 million+ complaint, filed this time by Wixen Music Publishing.
Wixen doubled down on that multifaceted complaint last month, accusing the Facebook parent of copyright infringement, defamation, and more. The way the publisher tells the story, Meta capitalized on the AI music explosion by proposing lowball terms during their licensing-renewal talks.
Then, after said talks therefore fell through, Meta allegedly pulled Wixen-represented works prematurely; placed the blame on Wixen itself when irked clients demanded an explanation; made further “false statements” about Wixen and caused some of these clients to jump ship; and directly infringed on the relevant IP to boot.
At a cool $150,000 a pop, the 681 allegedly infringed works mean Wixen’s pursuing damages in excess of the initially mentioned $100 million.
Back to Meta’s newly filed dismissal motion, it probably won’t come as a surprise that the tech giant is downplaying the alleged conduct as little more than the result of “a failed license renewal—and the routine wind-down period that followed.”
“Rather than accept the commercial consequences of that failed negotiation, Wixen filed this lawsuit, seeking to transform a routine licensing dispute into a sweeping copyright and tort dispute,” the Instagram owner’s retort reads.
Running with the point, the suit’s “vague and context-free snippets” of Meta employees’ communications allegedly fall well short of demonstrating “a plausible attempt to defame or disparage Wixen.”
“Wixen’s defamation claim fails because each of the alleged statements concern ownership disputes, relinquishment procedures, and licensing status during the unwinding of the parties’ music licensing relationship,” a different section states.
“Evaluated in context and from the standpoint of the recipients of the statements—sophisticated music-industry participants—the alleged statements are not reasonably susceptible of a defamatory meaning and are not plausibly alleged to be false.”
What about the infringement allegations? At the top level, Meta is adamant that Wixen lacks “the exclusive rights needed” – referring to exclusive licensing authorization or straight ownership – “to sue under the Copyright Act.”
“Although Meta raised standing as a threshold issue with Wixen’s original complaint,” the filing reads, “Wixen chose to double down: even as it now asserts infringement as to 681 Works, it still does not identify any Work it owns, any exclusive right it purportedly holds, or any agreement conferring such rights.”
Separately, Meta has called out the complaint’s alleged lack of specifics regarding pre- and post-1978 copyright dates as well as examples of alleged infringement.
“But for 652 of the 681 Works—more than 95% of the Works now at issue—Wixen alleges nothing at all. It offers no facts about where any such Work appeared; when it was allegedly used post-termination; how it was reproduced, distributed, or publicly performed; or what Meta did to infringe it,” the motion maintains.
And on the contributory side, the suit “provides all of one example in which one of the 681 Works at issue was allegedly used in a reel after the December 10, 2025 license termination date,” according to Meta.
With that, it’ll be worth continuing to track the high-stakes legal battle from here. Meanwhile, besides this case and the above-noted Eight Mile Style showdown, Meta is actively fending off a pair of copyright actions levied by Epidemic Sound.
Earlier in June, the WhatsApp parent moved to support its dismissal motion by invoking a little-discussed – and newly tossed – takedown-request-focused complaint filed against YouTube by Turkish label Art Records.
“YouTube reviewed the [takedown] request and asked Plaintiff to provide documentation to demonstrate that it owned the rights to the music videos at issue, but Plaintiff failed to provide the necessary documentation. Sometime later, YouTube closed Plaintiff’s account for failing to prove ownership over the supposedly copywritten content,” the presiding judge summed up when granting dismissal.
