Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theft
Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell and a coalition of other music publishers have filed a lawsuit against AI research firm Anthropic and its co‑founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint alleges that Anthropic conducted a “brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works,” using thousands of songs, lyrics and sheet music to train its Claude language model. The plaintiffs characterize the conduct as “blatant theft” and seek redress for what they describe as unauthorized use of their copyrighted material.
The lawsuit builds on earlier intellectual‑property actions against Anthropic, notably the Bartz v. Anthropic case in which a federal judge ordered the company to pay $1.5 billion after finding that, while the use of copyrighted works for training may be lawful, acquiring that content through piracy is not. The current complaint expands the scope of the allegations, accusing Anthropic of “flagrant piracy” by obtaining millions of copies of books that contain musical lyrics and sheet music via illegal torrent sites. The same legal team that represents Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group in a January filing is behind this action, underscoring a coordinated effort by major publishers to curb AI‑driven infringement.
Anthropic has responded through a spokesperson, stating that it disagrees with the publishers’ claims and will “defend ourselves robustly in court.” The case adds to a growing wave of litigation targeting AI developers over training‑data practices, raising questions about how the industry will balance innovation with copyright compliance. The outcome could set precedent for future disputes involving AI models that rely on large, potentially unlicensed datasets, affecting not only music publishers but also broader content creators and technology firms operating in the AI era.
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