Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic in multi-billion greenback lawsuit
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have joined forces to sue Anthropic, dwelling of Claude, over what the publishers name “one of many largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of mental property in historical past.”
The criticism – obtained by MBW, and which you’ll learn in full right here – additionally names Anthropic Co-Founder and Chief Government Officer Dario Amodei and Co-Founder Benjamin Mann as particular person defendants.
It was filed on Friday (August 28) within the US District Courtroom for the Northern District of California.
With Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music launching their very own go well with as plaintiffs, the publishing arms of all three main music corporations at the moment are litigating towards the Claude maker.
Common Music Publishing Group, Harmony Music Group, and ABKCO sued in Nashville in October 2023 over roughly 500 songs, in a case later transferred to California.
The identical publishers filed a second go well with in January 2026 masking greater than 20,000 works and looking for over USD $3 billion.
BMG introduced a 3rd case in March 2026 over 493 compositions, and Spherical Hill Music filed a fourth on August 17.
Sony and Warner are looking for statutory damages of as much as $150,000 per work willfully infringed, plus as much as $25,000 for every alleged removing of copyright administration data.
Among the many innumerable copyrighted works Defendants illegally harvested to gasoline Claude are hundreds upon hundreds of Music Publishers’ copyrighted musical compositions, together with such beloved songs as “Ain’t No Mountain Excessive Sufficient,” “All I Need for Christmas is You,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Right here Comes Santa Claus,” and “Paper Rings.” In blatant violation of copyright legislation, Defendants have unlawfully acquired troves of Music Publishers’ musical compositions, after which systematically copied these works a number of occasions, together with because the inputs to coach Anthropic’s Claude AI fashions and within the outputs these fashions generate.”
Sony Music Publishing/Warner Chappell Music criticism
The criticism identifies “tens of hundreds” of the publishers’ allegedly infringed compositions – a characterization that might place Anthropic‘s theoretical statutory publicity within the multi-billion-dollar vary.
Sony Music Publishing (SMP) and Warner Chappell Music (WCM) are demanding a jury trial, and are being represented within the go well with by Oppenheim + Zebrak, LLP – the lead counsel for the Harmony/UMG vs Anthropic case – and by Pryor Cashman LLP.
SMP and WCM are additionally demanding that each one infringing copies of the works are destroyed, and that Anthropic provides an account of Claude‘s coaching knowledge.
The go well with brings 4 counts: (i) direct infringement by torrenting, towards all three defendants; (ii) contributory infringement by torrenting, towards Amodei and Mann; and, towards Anthropic alone, (iii) direct infringement and (iv) removing or alteration of copyright administration data.
SMP and WCM’s criticism alleges that in June 2021, Mann used BitTorrent to obtain a minimum of 5 million pirated books from Library Genesis, and that Anthropic staff torrented a minimum of two million extra from Pirate Library Mirror in July 2022.
Each figures are drawn from findings in Bartz v. Anthropic, the authors’ case by which one other decide in the identical district described Anthropic‘s conduct as “easy piracy however at huge scale.”
“Dr. Amodei and Mr. Mann are personally liable for his or her respective roles on this unlawful torrenting of pirated copies of Music Publishers‘ works from LibGen and PiLiMi,” the criticism states.
The submitting cites inside Anthropic materials unsealed in Bartz, together with Mann‘s description of LibGen as “sketchy AF.”
It additionally states that Anthropic’s personal Archive Workforce had described LibGen as a “blatant violation of copyright.”
“[we] deliver this motion to carry accountable the culprits behind one of many largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of mental property in historical past. Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have carried out a brazen marketing campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on an enormous scale to be able to develop, function, and reap huge income from Anthropic’s “Claude” collection of synthetic intelligence (“AI”) fashions.”
Sony Music Publishing/Warner Chappell Music criticism
The publishers additional allege that Anthropic scraped lyrics from licensed websites together with MusixMatch and LyricFind, ran a “harmful scanning” operation on second-hand books, and used Widespread Crawl, The Pile, and Books3.
On the final of those, the criticism says Mann downloaded pirated books “to keep away from the difficulty of paying for them, hoping they could show helpful for coaching massive language fashions (LLMs) or one thing else” – quoting Bartz.
On the scanning, it quotes a 2024 Anthropic planning doc unsealed in Bartz: “We don’t need it to be identified that we’re engaged on this.”
The publishers additional allege that Claude reproduces their lyrics verbatim in outputs, and that guardrails added after earlier litigation (from UMG/Harmony/ABKCO) are “simply circumventable by merely ‘re-prompting’” the mannequin.
Music titles named within the physique of the submitting as being allegedly infringed embody Ain’t No Mountain Excessive Sufficient, All I Need for Christmas is You, Eye of the Tiger, Livin’ On a Prayer, September, Hallelujah, Uptown Funk, and Taylor Swift‘s Paper Rings.
The criticism leans closely on Anthropic‘s $1.5 billion settlement with e-book authors, agreed in September 2025 over the identical torrenting conduct.
“However Anthropic clearly considers that to be simply the price of doing enterprise on condition that its whole enterprise mannequin continues to be constructed on copyright theft,” it states. “And $1.5 billion is clearly not a big sufficient settlement to discourage infringing conduct by an organization that has parlayed such mass infringement right into a staggering $2-trillion-dollar valuation.”
That valuation determine is attributed within the submitting to an August 2026 Forbes report on a projected October IPO.
The publishers additionally take intention at Anthropic‘s positioning: “Regardless of branding itself because the ‘moral AI firm,’ Anthropic has repeatedly acted in ways in which belie that picture, prioritizing aggressive benefit over compliance with the legislation.”
The Sony and Warner Chappell criticism provides: “Music Publishers acknowledge the potential of moral AI expertise, and so they have entered licenses allowing the licensed use of their musical compositions in reference to AI.
“It stays essential, nevertheless, that AI improvement happens responsibly and on phrases which might be agreeable to rightsholders and in a way that protects their rights, livelihoods, and the artistic industries as a complete.
“Even essentially the most revolutionary of applied sciences should develop throughout the bounds of the legislation, and Anthropic‘s Claude fashions are not any completely different.”Music Enterprise Worldwide
