Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and more than 30 affiliated music publishers have filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the artificial intelligence company and two of its founders of unlawfully obtaining and using copyrighted musical compositions in connection with the development of its Claude AI models.
The lawsuit was filed on August 28, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann are named individually as defendants alongside the company. The publishers describe the alleged infringement as involving “tens of thousands” of copyrighted compositions.
The complaint goes beyond allegations that copyrighted music was used to train artificial intelligence. The publishers challenge several stages of Anthropic’s alleged acquisition and use of copyrighted material, including torrenting and downloading works, scraping lyrics, copying works during AI training, reproducing lyrics through Claude outputs and removing or altering copyright management information.
According to the complaint, Mann allegedly used BitTorrent in June 2021 to download at least five million books from Library Genesis (LibGen). Anthropic employees are alleged to have downloaded at least another two million books from Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) in July 2022. The publishers claim that some of those books contained copyrighted song lyrics and sheet music.
The complaint relies in part on evidence and findings arising from Bartz v. Anthropic, a separate copyright case brought by authors concerning Anthropic’s acquisition and use of books. The music publishers allege that the materials obtained from the online libraries included their copyrighted compositions.
Among the works identified in the new lawsuit are Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, All I Want for Christmas Is You, Eye of the Tiger, Livin’ on a Prayer, September, Hallelujah, Uptown Funk and Taylor Swift’s Paper Rings.
The publishers also allege that Anthropic obtained copyrighted lyrics from other sources. The complaint claims the company scraped lyrics from licensed services including Musixmatch and LyricFind, and used material associated with datasets and archives including Common Crawl, The Pile and Books3. It further alleges that Anthropic conducted a “destructive scanning” operation involving second-hand books.
Another part of the lawsuit concerns Claude’s outputs. The publishers allege that Anthropic’s models can reproduce copyrighted lyrics verbatim or nearly verbatim in response to prompts. They also claim that the models use knowledge acquired from copyrighted compositions to generate new lyrics that could compete with works produced and licensed by songwriters and music publishers.
The complaint additionally alleges that Anthropic removed or altered copyright management information, or CMI, while processing copyrighted material. Copyright management information can include information identifying a work, its author or copyright owner and other information associated with the management of copyright rights. The publishers bring a separate claim concerning the alleged removal or alteration of CMI.
The publishers emphasize that their lawsuit does not oppose artificial intelligence technology itself. According to the complaint, music publishers have entered into licensing arrangements permitting authorized use of musical compositions in connection with AI. Their position is that developers must obtain appropriate authorization when using protected works rather than acquiring and copying them without permission.
The complaint asserts four counts: direct copyright infringement through alleged torrenting against all three defendants; contributory infringement relating to torrenting against Amodei and Mann; direct copyright infringement against Anthropic; and removal or alteration of copyright management information against Anthropic.
The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work found to have been willfully infringed, as well as up to $25,000 for alleged violations involving copyright management information. Because the complaint alleges infringement involving tens of thousands of compositions, the potential damages sought could reach billions of dollars if the publishers prevail and maximum statutory damages are awarded. No single total damages figure has been demanded in the complaint.
The plaintiffs are also seeking injunctive relief, destruction of allegedly infringing copies and information concerning the training data used for Claude.
Anthropic has disputed the allegations. The company said it disagrees with the publishers’ claims and intends to defend itself in court. Anthropic has also maintained that AI training constitutes fair use of copyrighted material. The publishers’ allegations have not been proven, and the court has not determined whether Anthropic, Amodei or Mann infringed the asserted copyrights.
| Case Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Court | U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California |
| Case | Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC, et al. v. Anthropic PBC, et al. |
| Case No. | 5:26-cv-09217 |
| Filed | August 28, 2026 |
| Nature of Suit | Copyright |
| Cause of Action | 17 U.S.C. § 101 — Copyright Infringement |
| Plaintiffs | Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc. and more than 30 affiliated music publishing entities |
| Defendants | Anthropic PBC; Dario Amodei; Benjamin Mann |
| Jury Demand | Plaintiffs |
| Counsel for Plaintiffs | Oppenheim + Zebrak, LLP and Pryor Cashman LLP |
Source: Complaint in Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC, et al. v. Anthropic PBC, et al., Case No. 5:26-cv-09217
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