Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have sued Anthropic over alleged copyright infringement involving the training and outputs of Claude. The complaint, filed on August 28 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, names Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as individual defendants. Music Business Worldwide first reported the case.
Anthropic music copyright lawsuit: what the complaint alleges
The publishers accuse Anthropic of torrenting, scraping and downloading copyrighted material, then copying it during the training of Claude models and in their responses. The complaint says the allegedly affected catalogue includes tens of thousands of musical compositions, naming songs such as “Eye of the Tiger”, “September”, “Uptown Funk” and Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings”.
The Anthropic music copyright lawsuit also alleges that Anthropic scraped lyrics from sites including MusixMatch and LyricFind, and used datasets including Common Crawl, The Pile and Books3. It claims Claude can produce verbatim or near-verbatim lyrics after users re-prompt the model. Those are allegations in the complaint, not findings by the court. The full filing is available here.
How much could the case cost Anthropic?
Sony and Warner are seeking up to $150,000 for each work they say was willfully infringed, plus up to $25,000 for each alleged removal or alteration of copyright-management information. The complaint asks for a jury trial, an account of Claude’s training data and methods, destruction of infringing copies, and other relief.
The publishers’ case follows several other copyright disputes involving Anthropic. Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO filed a separate case in January over more than 20,000 works, seeking more than $3 billion. Anthropic also agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with book authors in a separate case involving pirated training material. TechCrunch reported that Anthropic disputes the publishers’ claims and intends to defend itself in court.
There is no reported UAE-specific consequence from this filing yet. The case will still be watched by creators, rights-holders and businesses using AI services in the UAE because it tests how copyrighted creative work can be acquired, trained on and reproduced commercially.
Claude AI creative tools and Claude for UAE small businesses have more background on Anthropic’s products.
The lawsuit was filed in California, but its argument is likely to be followed well beyond the US. Music catalogues are licensed businesses, and the publishers are arguing that training and output reproduction should not bypass that market.
Who is suing Anthropic over music copyright?
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, alongside related publishing entities, filed the case against Anthropic, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann.
What are the publishers seeking?
They are seeking statutory damages, destruction of infringing copies, an account of Claude’s training data and a jury trial.
Has Anthropic responded to the lawsuit?
Yes. An Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company disagrees with the publishers’ claims and intends to defend itself in court.
