Photo Credit: Dima Solomin
The high-stakes Wixen v. Meta infringement and defamation legal battle isn’t letting up. Now, the publisher is prepping an amended action as the Instagram parent aggressively moves to dismiss the entire complaint.
As first reported by DMN, that $70 million complaint set sail in January, when Wixen accused Meta of infringing on “well over one thousand” works. Behind the top-level allegation, the Calabasas-headquartered plaintiff described Meta licensing-renewal discussions that failed to produce an agreement.
And before the existing license expired in December 2025, Meta allegedly “unilaterally chose to remove some of Wixen’s current and former clients’ music” from its platforms before allegedly telling the publisher’s “current and former clients that the music was removed by Wixen” itself.
Unsurprisingly, these allegedly false statements, purportedly made “with the malicious intent to strong-arm Wixen into accepting drastically reduced rates,” didn’t sit right with the plaintiff’s clients, some of whom are said to have cut ties as a result.
(Who jumped ship? The lawsuit is quiet in this department, and we don’t know precisely why professionals left Wixen during the past year. However, Mazzy Star, Chelsea Perkins, Zaro Vega, and Allison Wood’s 105 Decibels are featured on Wixen’s client page as captured by the Wayback Machine in May 2025, but not on the page’s current version.)
Additionally, post-license expiration, the works in question were allegedly incorporated into “thousands of reels” across Meta platforms without authorization or compensation.
Meanwhile, as for the reason behind the tech giant’s alleged maneuvering, Wixen pointed to an alleged scheme “to replace human-generated, royalty-bearing music with royalty-free AI-generated music.”
Back to where the case stands at present, counsel for both sides participated in a pair of (video) meetings closer to May’s beginning.
Admittedly, the talks don’t appear to have brought with them material progress towards a resolution. As recapped by the parties in a joint filing, Meta outlined concerns about Wixen’s copyright standing – referring to the complaint’s alleged lack of specifics and inclusion of pre-1978 works. And Wixen in more words defended its claims as sufficient.
All told, then, despite their “productive conversation, the parties did not reach agreement to narrow or resolve issues, and no amendments were agreed in advance of the contemplated motion,” according to the summary.
Said motion refers to Meta’s anticipated stab at dismissal. The litigants did make a bit of headway here, as the judge in an order gave Wixen until tomorrow, May 15th, to file its amended complaint. From there, Meta will have until June 15th (this cutoff was originally May 7th) to respond.
With that, another music-space copyright complaint against Meta seems pretty far from resolving; after years of back and forth, the Facebook owner remains embroiled in an ugly dispute with Epidemic Sound as well.
