Universal Music and Sony Music have been cleared by the court to serve a deposition subpoena on C.C. Gong, a former principal at Menlo Ventures, in their copyright case against Suno. It concerns a social post she has since deleted, in which she said she had moved most of her listening to Suno because Spotify kept serving her the same overplayed recommendations. Digital Music News reported the ruling on 26 October.
“Suno takes no position on the subpoena’s propriety and does not intend to limit any objection Ms. Gong or Menlo Ventures may raise, including by motion to quash”
Suno, in its court filing, in its court filing · digitalmusicnews.com ↗
The post argued that once anyone can make music, the catalogue becomes endless and listening more personal, so that everybody can find a song of their own. Menlo is the investor that led Suno's $250M Series C. Its lawyer told the labels on 12 October that Gong had left the firm at the end of September, although in late September and early October Menlo had not denied she worked there.
Timing is Suno's complaint. The subpoena came 53 days after the labels' subpoena to Menlo and 12 days after fact discovery closed for everything except the section 1201 claim. Suno did not oppose it and took no position on whether it was proper, but asked that the filing record that Menlo or Gong could move to quash. The Menlo subpoena had already led to a motion to compel in mid-October; the labels want due diligence papers, records of Menlo's dealings with Suno and CEO Mikey Shulman, and analyses of its copyright exposure.
About Suno
Menlo Ventures is not a bystander in Suno's story: it led the $250M Series C announced on 19 November 2025, alongside Lightspeed and Matrix Partners, and Menlo's site lists Gong as a principal covering early-stage consumer tech.
In June 2026 Suno disclosed a Series D led by Bond Capital, with Matrix, Lightspeed, Menlo Ventures and Schroders Capital also taking part, while it was fighting the major labels and independent artists in court. Lightspeed, which backed its Series B, C and D, moved on 19 October 2026 to quash the labels' subpoena to it; Universal and Sony opposed that, seeking documents on training-data risks and on Suno's efforts to license that data.
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Elsewhere in the case, Lightspeed Venture Partners is fighting its own subpoena, and Suno and Udio have asked the court to make the Mechanical Licensing Collective hand over streaming play-volume data, including DistroKid's AI-detection data. Suno has argued fair use from the start, and the outlet reads a prominent investor's public praise as unhelpful to its claim that its outputs do not harm the market for real music. Gong's deposition is the next step, unless a motion to quash lands first.
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