Milk & Honey founder sues Silicon Valley couple for $5M over AI music software he says they stole

Grammy-winning producer Warren “Oak” Felder and Milk & Honey founder Lucas Keller have filed a $5 million lawsuit against Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Walter and Samia De Brouwer. The complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and reported by Digital Music News on August 2, 2026, says the couple took AI music software the plaintiffs helped build and quietly moved it into a new company.

Most AI music lawsuits pit rightsholders against AI platforms. This one is different: two music industry insiders say the tech founders they partnered with cut them out of their own invention.

What the complaint says happened to the Snowcrash software

In 2023, Felder and Keller worked with the De Brouwers to build AI music software. Its core feature was a proprietary “copyright checker,” a tool designed to detect copyrighted chords. In exchange for the development work and the patent transfer, each received 345,000 shares in the De Brouwers’ company, Snowcrash.

The complaint alleges the couple then created a new entity, Sound Patrol, and transferred Snowcrash’s key assets and software patents into it. Snowcrash stock, the only payment Felder and Keller ever got, became worthless on paper.

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Sound Patrol has not paid a penny to Keller or Felder for their work developing the software or for the patent.

Sound Patrol, Michael Ovitz, and the alleged major label licenses

Sound Patrol is no garage project. Walter De Brouwer, who co-founded the health AI company Doc.ai before its sale to Sharecare, lists Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz as co-founder on the Sound Patrol website. The suit argues this pairing gave the company direct access to the entertainment industry.

The complaint claims Sound Patrol then licensed the product to major labels, including Universal Music Group and Sony, with none of the money flowing back to the two men who say they built it. Neither the De Brouwers nor Sound Patrol has publicly responded to the filing.

Why the Milk & Honey case matters for producers building AI tools

Plenty of producers and songwriters are co-developing AI tools right now, usually with equity instead of cash. This case shows the risk in the fine print: if the assets can be moved to a new entity, your shares can be stranded in an empty shell. Get asset-transfer restrictions in writing before the code ships.

Copyright detection tech is also becoming the industry’s next gold rush. Labels want it to police AI platforms after wins like GEMA’s ruling against Suno, and disputes over AI training rights keep multiplying. A patented chord-level copyright checker with UMG and Sony as customers is exactly the kind of asset worth fighting over.