Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and several other music publishing companies have initiated legal action against Anthropic, along with its co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. The publishers allege that the AI company has engaged in an “aggressive campaign” characterized by illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted content.
The complaint, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was initially highlighted by Music Business Worldwide. The plaintiffs accuse Anthropic of committing “blatant theft” by leveraging thousands of copyrighted pieces to train its AI model, Claude.
An Anthropic representative responded via email to TechCrunch, stating, “We disagree with the publishers’ claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court.”
This lawsuit is not Anthropic’s first encounter with intellectual property disputes. In fact, some of the same legal teams representing the music publishers also played a role in previous cases against the company, including one involving Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group filed in January. Additionally, they were involved in the notorious Bartz v. Anthropic case, where a group of authors charged Anthropic with using their copyrighted works for training purposes. In that case, Anthropic faced a significant ruling, with a judge ordering the company to pay $1.5 billion; the court concluded that while the AI lab could legally use copyrighted materials, acquiring such content through illegal means was not permissible.
Although the current lawsuits share common threads, there are notable distinctions. This recent case is particularly expansive, intensifying accusations against Anthropic with claims of “flagrant piracy.” The publishers assert that the company illegally torrenting to amass millions of copies of various books, including those featuring lyrics and sheet music.
The article has been updated to reflect Anthropic's official response.
