Sony Music, Warner Chappell Sue Anthropic Over Copyright Infringement

The lawsuit, filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as defendants. The publishers accuse the AI lab of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works for use in training its Claude AI model.

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and numerous other music publishers describe the actions as a "brazen campaign" and "blatant theft," saying Anthropic used thousands of copyrighted works, including lyrics and sheet music, without authorization.

This is not the first such case against Anthropic. The same legal team represents Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group in a case filed in January, and previously led the Bartz v. Anthropic lawsuit in which authors accused the company of using copyrighted books to train Claude. In that matter, Anthropic was ordered to pay $1.

The new complaint is broader, specifically accusing Anthropic of "flagrant piracy" through illegal torrenting to obtain millions of copies of books containing lyrics and sheet music. An Anthropic spokesperson said the company disagrees with the publishers' claims and intends to defend itself robustly in court.