CUSIP Lawsuit: Allegations, Copyright Claim, and Stakes

The CUSIP lawsuit is a federal antitrust class action, Dinosaur Financial Group LLC v. CUSIP Global Services, alleging that the American Bankers Association, S&P Global, and FactSet used questionable copyright claims and coercive licensing tactics to extract more than $100 million a year in overcharges from financial institutions that have no alternative to CUSIP identifiers. It was filed in March 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and remains active, with a class certification motion pending as of June 2026.¹

Why CUSIP Fees Are Unavoidable

A CUSIP is a nine-digit alphanumeric code assigned to a stock, bond, mutual fund share, or other financial instrument so that banks, brokers, clearinghouses, and regulators can identify it. The system has been in use for over fifty years. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, through which virtually all U.S. securities transactions settle, relies on CUSIPs to process trades.

Regulators also require them. The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s Rule G-34, approved by the SEC in 1983, requires dealers to obtain CUSIP numbers for municipal bonds.² No other identifier is currently permitted as a substitute for transaction reporting under existing MSRB rules.³ That mandatory status is what gives the case its leverage: because firms cannot do business without CUSIPs, the entities controlling the system can set the price.

Who Is Suing Whom

The CUSIP system is owned by the American Bankers Association, a banking trade group.⁴ Day-to-day operations, including issuing numbers, maintaining the database, and selling licenses, are handled by CUSIP Global Services. For decades, S&P Global ran CGS under contract with the ABA. In March 2022, FactSet completed its acquisition of CGS from S&P Global for approximately $1.925 billion, a sale required by the European Commission as a condition of S&P’s merger with IHS Markit.⁵ The ABA reportedly retains 30 percent of CGS’s annual licensing revenues.⁶

Three investment firms serve as class representatives: Dinosaur Financial Group, an investment banking and brokerage firm; Hildene Capital Management, an institutional credit-focused asset manager; and Swiss Life Investment Management Holding AG, a Swiss institutional portfolio manager.⁷ The proposed class would cover anyone who paid a license fee to S&P or FactSet for the use of CUSIP identifiers under a subscription or distribution agreement.⁸

The Core Allegations

The complaint alleges violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. According to plaintiffs, the defendants prohibited data vendors like Bloomberg from providing CUSIP identifiers to financial institutions unless those institutions signed a separate license agreement directly with S&P or CGS. Once signed, the agreement restricted how the institution could use the numbers, even though federal agencies require their use for regulatory reporting.⁹

Institutions that refused to pay faced the threat of losing access to CUSIP data entirely. The Hildene Capital complaint described a “hold-up” strategy in which defendants threatened to strip CUSIP identifiers from data feeds unless users signed subscription agreements.⁶ Subscription contracts also included “Usage Review” provisions letting the operator audit a firm’s records and bill it for the cost of the inspection if the firm was found underpaying by five percent or more.

The complaint further alleges “triple-dipping”: charging roughly $280 per CUSIP to securities issuers, charging licensing fees to data providers, and then demanding a subscription fee from the end-user financial institutions that already received the data through those providers.⁶

The Copyright Challenge

The entire licensing structure rests on the ABA’s assertion that it holds a copyright on CUSIP numbers and the CGS database. Plaintiffs call those claims “bogus and malleable.” They argue that CUSIPs are factual identifiers, comparable to license plate numbers, generated through a rigid convention established over half a century ago, and that they lack the originality copyright law requires.¹⁰

The legal foundation is the Supreme Court’s 1991 decision in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., which held that copyright protection requires at least a “modicum of creativity” and rejected the idea that effort alone in compiling data is enough. The Feist court held that an alphabetical telephone directory was not copyrightable.¹¹ Plaintiffs contend CUSIPs, as standardized identifiers assigned through a mechanical process, are even further from that threshold.

How Much Is at Stake

The complaint estimates that the annual overcharge to the proposed class exceeds $100 million.⁷ Because plaintiffs seek treble damages under the Clayton Act for licensing contracts signed since at least 2018, total potential exposure for the defendants has been estimated at over $1 billion.¹²

Where the Case Stands

The case was filed on March 4, 2022, and assigned to Judge Katherine Polk Failla. A companion suit brought by Hildene Capital was filed on March 7, and the cases were consolidated.¹

Defendants moved to dismiss. On July 17, 2023, the court denied the motion as to the core monopolization claims, allowing the antitrust allegations to proceed, though it dismissed several other claims.¹³ The ruling meant the court found plaintiffs’ theory of monopoly power plausible enough to survive early scrutiny.

After discovery, plaintiffs filed for class certification and appointment of class counsel on August 14, 2025. Defendants’ opposition was due by December 17, 2025, and the reply by February 16, 2026. A settlement conference was adjourned until 30 days after class certification briefing was complete.¹⁴

As of June 2026, the case remains active, with the most recent filing dated June 12, 2026. The class certification motion appears still pending. Both sides have demanded a jury trial.¹

Parallel Pressure on CUSIP

The suit is one of several pressure points. In 2011, the European Commission found in Case COMP/39.592 that S&P had abused its dominant position by charging unfairly high fees for U.S. International Securities Identification Numbers in the European Economic Area. The Commission rejected S&P’s intellectual property claims over ISIN records and concluded that licensing fees charged to indirect users receiving ISINs through data vendors were inconsistent with cost-recovery principles. S&P agreed to abolish all licensing fees for indirect users within the EEA and to offer a standalone ISIN-only data product for $15,000 per year.¹⁵ Plaintiffs cite that action as evidence that the same conduct has been challenged internationally.

In November 2021, the SEC’s Asset Management Advisory Committee reported that “CUSIP Global Services appears to have a monopoly on the securities identification system” and that the advisory and fund industry “currently has no reasonable alternatives,” calling the licensing practices “fundamentally unfair.”¹⁶

The Financial Data Transparency Act, enacted in December 2022, directed nine federal agencies to adopt common, nonproprietary data standards for financial reporting. During rulemaking, several agencies proposed replacing CUSIP with Bloomberg’s Financial Instrument Global Identifier, an open-standard code free to access and redistribute. The ABA pushed back, arguing the switch would be “arbitrary and capricious” and that FIGI’s most useful data fields were locked behind Bloomberg’s paywall.¹⁷

In June 2026, the agencies published a final joint rule. They chose not to establish FIGI as a joint standard for financial instruments. Each agency retains discretion to adopt whatever identifier it deems appropriate in future agency-specific rulemakings, including identifiers outside the joint standards where the joint standard is “not feasible” or an alternative would “minimize disruptive changes.”¹⁸ For now, CUSIP’s position as the dominant instrument identifier remains intact.

A separate antitrust suit reached the courts in February 2026. The Global Infrastructure Finance and Development Authority, a Pennsylvania entity seeking to finance large-scale infrastructure projects, sued CGS and FactSet in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. GIFDA alleges that CGS refused to issue or activate CUSIPs needed for state-authorized municipal bond sales, blocking more than $219 billion in authorized bond financing across several project entities.¹⁹ GIFDA and co-plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in April 2026. CGS has responded that antitrust law does not require it to issue CUSIPs to any party that requests one, asserting that “as a general rule, businesses are free to choose the parties with which they will deal.”¹²

1
CourtListener. Dinosaur Financial Group LLC v. CUSIP Global Services, Docket
2
Federal Register. Self-Regulatory Organizations; Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board; Notice of Filing of a Proposed Rule Change
3
SEC. Bloomberg LP Comment Letter on SR-MSRB-2024-01
4
PR Newswire. CUSIP Global Services and American Bankers Association Joint Statement on FactSet Acquisition of CGS From S&P Global
5
WatersTechnology. Class-Action Lawsuit Takes Aim at CUSIP, S&P, FactSet, ABA
6
NAPA Net. 2nd Suit Targets Abusive CUSIP Licensing Fees, Tactics
7
ClassAction.org. Dinosaur Financial Group LLC et al v. CUSIP Global Services et al, Complaint
8
MLex. Plaintiffs Seek Class Certification in US Antitrust Case Against S&P Global, FactSet, ABA
9
ClassAction.org. Antitrust Lawsuit Alleges S&P, FactSet Conspired to Eliminate Competition in Financial Instrument ID Number Market
10
ASPPA Net. Class Action Suit Challenges Big CUSIP Licensing Fees
11
Justia. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340
12
FinOps Info. CUSIP Global Services Non-Profit Escalate Antitrust War Over CUSIPs
13
Law360. Dinosaur Financial Group LLC et al v. CUSIP Global Services et al, Case Page
14
CourtListener. Dinosaur Financial Group LLC v. CUSIP Global Services, Docket Page 2
15
European Commission. Case COMP/39.592, Standard & Poor’s
16
SEC. Final Report and Recommendations of the Asset Management Advisory Committee for Small Advisers and Funds
17
SDMN. Banks Hint at Legal Action Over FDTA’s Move to Replace CUSIP Identifier
18
SEC. Final Joint Rule Establishing Data Standards Under the FDTA
19
WatersTechnology. Pennsylvania Entity Files Antitrust Suit Against Cusip Global Services