Sony Music, Warner Sue Anthropic for Copyright Infringement
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed suit against Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, August 29, 2026.
The Allegations
The publishers accuse Anthropic of conducting a “brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works” to train its Claude AI model. They characterize this as “blatant theft” and “flagrant piracy,” specifically highlighting illegal torrent downloads to obtain millions of copies of books containing lyrics and sheet music.
Copyrighted Material Used
According to the complaint, Anthropic unlawfully used approximately 20,000 copyrighted songs without prior licensing or authorization to train its large language models. The disputed catalog spans prominent works from globally renowned artists, including The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson.
The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic obtained lyrics and sheet music through pirate sources including Library Genesis and the Pirate Library Mirror, and scraped licensed lyric websites such as Musixmatch and LyricFind.
Damages Sought
The two music publishers are seeking a jury trial and up to 25,000 for each instance of Anthropic removing copyright management information.
Anthropic’s Response
An Anthropic spokesperson stated: “We disagree with the publishers’ claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court.”
Legal Context
This lawsuit follows Anthropic’s previous $1.5 billion copyright settlement in the Bartz case, where a judge ruled that while using copyrighted works for training was legal, acquiring content through piracy was not.