A coalition of music publishers including Sony, EMI and Warner are suing LimeWire for breech of copyright.

The publishers are pushing for £10,230 per track that infringes copyright.

This comes weeks after a federal court in the US found LimeWire liable for providing services that able users to illicitly download intellectual material.

George Searle (LimeWire’s CEO) claims the company is working to provide a new and legal service: “It will have unrestricted downloading and streaming, it will be easy to use and easy to pay for.”

A spokesperson from LimeWire issued the statement: “We have had many promising meetings with labels, publishers, songwriters and artists alike about our new music service and business model that will compensate the entire industry.”

The Recoding Industry Association of America (RIAA) has reported that 93% of LimeWire's traffic was founded upon infringing on copyrighted material.

Chairman and CEO of the RIAA said: “This definitive ruling is an extraordinary victory for the entire creative community. The court made clear that LimeWire was liable for inducing widespread copyright theft.”

Its application has been downloaded on more than 200m occasions and has approximately 50m typical users per month.