Now Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic in multi-billion dollar lawsuit: ‘One of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history.’
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Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a joint copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, chief executive Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on 28 August, alleging what they called "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history." The case means the publishing arms of all three major music companies are now pursuing legal action against the Claude developer, following earlier suits from Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group, ABKCO, BMG and Round Hill Music. The publishers accuse Anthropic of unlawfully acquiring and repeatedly copying tens of thousands of musical compositions, both to train Claude and within the outputs it generates.
The complaint, which names songs including "Eye of the Tiger" and "All I Want for Christmas is You", alleges Mann personally used BitTorrent to download at least five million pirated books from Library Genesis in June 2021, with Anthropic employees torrenting a further two million from Pirate Library Mirror in 2022, drawing on evidence unsealed in the separate Bartz v. Anthropic authors' case. Sony and Warner are seeking a jury trial, disclosure of Claude's training data, destruction of allegedly infringing copies, and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per wilfully infringed work plus $25,000 for each alleged removal of copyright-management information — exposure that could run into multiple billions of dollars.
- Sony and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic over alleged mass music copyright theft
- All three major music publishers now litigating against Claude's maker
- Suit seeks up to $150,000 per song plus data disclosure and destruction
New here? Start with this
Music publishers manage the rights to songs on behalf of writers and other owners. They can license lyrics, melodies and recordings for use in services, and can take legal action when they believe copyrighted material has been copied without permission.
Anthropic is the US company behind Claude, a chatbot and other artificial-intelligence tools that generate text and answer questions. Such systems are developed by processing large amounts of written material, which has prompted disputes over whether copyrighted works can be used for training and how that material was obtained.
The case is part of a wider argument between creative industries and AI companies over copyright, licensing and payment. Its outcome could affect the rules for using songs and other protected works in developing AI systems, as well as the potential costs for companies that make them.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The publishers’ case is that songwriters and rights-holders should retain meaningful control over the use of their work, particularly where a commercial AI system is allegedly built using copies acquired from piracy sites. They argue that systematic, unauthorised copying at this scale undermines licensing markets and the economic basis for creating music, while removing copyright information may further obstruct attribution and enforcement. On this view, robust damages and disclosure are necessary both to compensate creators and to establish that technological innovation does not depend on disregarding intellectual-property law.
The case against
Anthropic’s strongest prospective case is that training a general-purpose AI on large collections of text may be a transformative analytical use rather than a substitute for enjoying or distributing the underlying songs. It may argue that models do not retain a usable library of complete works, that outputs can be guarded against reproducing protected lyrics, and that excessive liability could deter socially valuable research and entrench only the largest, best-resourced technology firms. It could also contend that the legality of training must be assessed carefully under copyright doctrine, including fair-use principles, rather than inferred solely from the alleged provenance of some source material.
More coverage
- The Verge — Sony Music and Warner Chappell are suing Anthropic
- TechCrunch — Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theft
- Engadget — Sony and Warner sue Anthropic for 'blatant violation' of copyright law