Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, used tens of thousands of copyrighted musical works without permission He filed a lawsuit against Anthropic. The companies targeted the training process of Claude models in the file they submitted to the US Northern California federal court on August 28. Moreover, publishers are liable for every intentional copyright infringement. Compensation up to 150 thousand dollars demands. Due to the number of works, total demand can reach billions of dollars.
Sony Music Entertainment or Warner Bros. not, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed by rights holders affiliated with. However, the companies named not only Anthropic PBC but also CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants. While the plaintiffs requested a jury trial, they also brought the source of Claude’s training data into the court filing. Anthropic stated that it did not agree with the accusations and would defend itself strongly in court.
According to the complaint, Benjamin Mann used BitTorrent via Library Genesis in 2021 at least 5 million pirated books downloaded it. Then Anthropic employees will be looking for at least 2 million books got more. Publishers claim that some of the books contain copyrighted lyrics and sheet music, which Anthropic used in the development of Claude. In its own transparency documents, Anthropic explains that it uses internet sources, third-party data, and different training data for its Claude models.
Plaintiffs also allege that Claude reproduced some of the lyrics verbatim or closely to the original text. on file Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, All I Want for Christmas Is You, Eye of the Tiger And Livin’ on a Prayer are among the examples. List also September, hallelujah, Uptown Funk and Taylor Swift Paper Rings It also includes his work. Publishers for each violation for which copyright management information is removed Additional compensation up to 25 thousand dollars he wants.
Anthropic has faced similar copyright lawsuits before
Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord and ABKCO filed a separate lawsuit against Anthropic in 2023 for nearly 500 songs. Then, in January 2026, the same publishers published more than 20 thousand titles. Over 3 billion dollars in compensation he demanded. BMG and Round Hill Music also filed separate lawsuits against Anthropic in 2026. Thus, the publishing parties of three major music groups took their copyright disputes with Claude’s developer to court.
In the Bartz case, Judge William Alsup ruled in June 2025 that modeling instruction with books from legal sources falls within the scope of fair use under certain circumstances. However, Alsup isolated millions of books downloaded from pirated sites, and Anthropic later contacted the authors. $1.5 billion deal agreed. Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell also rely on these torrent downloads in the new file. Meanwhile, while the lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 continues, WikiHow filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for more than 11 thousand articles on August 24.
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