Universal, Sony and Warner told a US appeals court they will no longer pursue their music piracy case against internet service provider Grande Communications — but Grande is refusing to let them leave quietly.

The three major record labels set out their position in a letter to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on July 29, 2026. They said they had offered to dismiss the case voluntarily, with prejudice — meaning it cannot be refiled — with each side covering its own costs. Grande declined. In its own letter the same day, the Texas-based ISP asked the court to rule formally in its favour and to award it the costs of the appeal, including roughly USD $4 million in bond premiums that Grande told the labels it incurred during the litigation, according to Music Business Worldwide.

The standoff comes after a Supreme Court ruling reshaped the legal standard the case depends on. On March 25, 2026, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Cox v. Sony Music, which clarified what an internet service provider must do to be held liable for contributory infringement — the legal theory that a party can be responsible for others' copyright violations if it knowingly enables them. On April 6, 2026, the Supreme Court vacated the lower court ruling that had ordered Grande to pay $46.7 million in damages, sending the case back for reconsideration in light of the new standard, as Music Business Worldwide and IPWatchdog reported.

The labels cited that ruling as the reason they will not press the merits of the case further. They asked the appeals court to vacate the judgment against Grande and send the case back to the district court, a course they called proper as a matter of law and the most equitable outcome. Grande, though, argues the labels cannot prove contributory infringement under the standard the Supreme Court set, and wants a formal judgment in its favour — plus its money back.

The case began in 2017, when the labels sued Grande, a subsidiary of Astound Broadband, accusing it of failing to act against subscribers who repeatedly pirated music. In 2022, a federal jury in Austin found Grande liable for willful contributory infringement of 1,403 copyrighted sound recordings and ordered it to pay $46.8 million in damages. The Fifth Circuit upheld the liability finding in October 2024 but threw out the damages award and ordered a new trial to recalculate it.

Grande submitted its Supreme Court petition in March 2025, asking whether an ISP can be held liable for contributory copyright infringement at all. That question, combined with the Cox ruling, is what now stands between the labels and a clean exit.

What makes the impasse unusual is that both sides want the case to end — they just disagree on the terms. The labels want to walk away with no further liability and no further cost. Grande wants the court to say it won, and it wants $4 million for the trouble of defending an appeal that, in its telling, should never have survived the Supreme Court's ruling. The Fifth Circuit now has to decide who gets the last word.