Lehrman v. Lovo

The allegations

Lehrman and Sage say they were hired for voice-over sessions in 2019 and 2020 through Fiverr, by buyers who turned out to be Lovo employees and who told them the recordings were for internal or academic research only. The suit alleges Lovo instead used those recordings to train its Genny text-to-speech system and then sold synthetic clones of their voices to customers under the invented names "Kyle Snow" and "Sally Coleman." As originally pled, the case combined federal trademark claims (that the vocal identities functioned as marks), copyright claims, New York right-of-publicity claims under Civil Rights Law §§50–51, a New York consumer-protection claim, and a breach-of-contract claim tied to what the recordings were supposedly for.

The legal question

Is the sound of a cloned voice copyrightable subject matter? Are a person's distinctive vocal characteristics a trademark? And if neither federal intellectual-property theory reaches unauthorized commercial voice cloning, do state right-of-publicity law, consumer-protection law and ordinary contract law fill that gap instead?

The ruling and its limits

Judge Oetken answered on July 10, 2025: no, mostly, on the federal theories. The sound of a voice is not copyrightable subject matter, and vocal attributes are not trademarks, so those claims were dismissed. But the New York right-of-publicity claims, the consumer-protection claim and the breach-of-contract claim all stated viable theories and were allowed to proceed, and the plaintiffs were given leave to replead copyright claims tied specifically to use of the recordings themselves. A second amended complaint followed on July 31, 2025.

That ruling is a pleadings-stage decision, not a verdict. It means the surviving state-law theories are legally sound enough to go to discovery — it says nothing about whether Lovo actually breached the terms under which the recordings were obtained, or whether the plaintiffs can prove their voices were used the way they allege.

Bankruptcy freezes the case

Discovery kept slipping. A January 2026 order extended expert disclosure and discovery deadlines, and a further May 5, 2026 order pushed fact discovery and depositions to August 21, 2026, expert disclosures to October 12, 2026, and the close of expert discovery to December 1, 2026. On May 22, 2026, the court set oral argument for June 16, 2026 on a second motion to dismiss then pending in the case.

That hearing never happened. On May 27, 2026, Lovo filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, listed in court filings as a no-asset case with roughly $245,000 in assets against roughly $17,800 in liabilities. The next day, Judge Oetken entered an order staying the entire case in light of the bankruptcy filing, adjourning all conferences and deadlines — including the June 16 hearing — pending further order.

Where it stands

As of July 22, 2026, the case remains stayed under the bankruptcy filing. No court has ruled on the merits of the surviving right-of-publicity, consumer-protection or contract claims, the pending second motion to dismiss was never argued, and it's unclear whether — or how — the plaintiffs will recover anything from a company reporting more liabilities than assets in a no-asset Chapter 7 liquidation.

Why it matters for training-data licensing

Before the bankruptcy filing, this was already the reference template for U.S. voice-cloning liability: federal copyright and trademark theories mostly fail, and the real exposure sits in state publicity rights, consumer-protection law and the contract under which the recordings were obtained in the first place. "Internal research only" recordings that end up training a commercial product create claims that a fair-use defense doesn't reach, because there's no copyright theory to apply fair use to.

The ending complicates the lesson for buyers rather than erasing it. A legally sound, well-pleaded claim can still evaporate if the defendant runs out of money before judgment. Diligence on voice datasets and TTS products should keep documenting per-speaker consent and use-scope terms — that's still where the surviving claims live — but it should now also account for vendor solvency. A favorable ruling on paper is worth little against a no-asset Chapter 7 estate.