Sony Music, Warner Chappell sue Anthropic over Claude piracy
Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell and other music publishers have sued Anthropic and its co-founders, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, accusing the AI company of a "brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works." The suit was filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and was first reported by Music Business Worldwide. The publishers accuse Anthropic of "blatant theft," saying it used thousands of copyrighted works to train its AI model, Claude.
An Anthropic spokesperson responded in an emailed statement to TechCrunch: "We disagree with the publishers' claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court."
This is not the first intellectual property lawsuit Anthropic has faced. Some of the same lawyers behind this case also represent Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group in a separate suit filed in January, and previously led Bartz v. Anthropic, in which a group of authors accused Anthropic of using copyrighted works to train products like Claude. In that case, a judge ruled that while it was legal for Anthropic to use copyrighted works, it was not legal to acquire that content through piracy, and the company was ordered to pay $1.5 billion.
The music publishers' case makes similar arguments to those earlier suits but is described as particularly broad, building on them further. It additionally accuses Anthropic of "flagrant piracy," saying the company used illegal torrenting to obtain millions of copies of books, including ones containing lyrics and sheet music.
Key facts
- Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell and other music publishers sued Anthropic, along with co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
- The lawsuit accuses Anthropic of a "brazen campaign" of illegal torrenting, scraping and downloading of copyrighted works, and of "blatant theft" for using thousands of those works to train Claude.
- It also accuses Anthropic of "flagrant piracy," saying the company used illegal torrenting to obtain millions of copies of books, including ones containing lyrics and sheet music.
- The case follows Bartz v. Anthropic, where a judge ruled it was legal for Anthropic to use copyrighted works but illegal to acquire them through piracy, and ordered the company to pay $1.5 billion.
- Anthropic said in an emailed statement that it disagrees with the publishers' claims and intends to "defend ourselves robustly in court."
Why it matters
This adds a major music-industry lawsuit to a growing list of copyright cases against Anthropic, extending the fight over AI training data from books and text into song lyrics and sheet music. It leans on ground already covered in the separate Bartz v. Anthropic case, where a court found that training an AI model on copyrighted material was legal, but that acquiring the material through piracy was not, and fined Anthropic $1.5 billion for it. If courts keep applying that same split, the outcome here may turn less on whether Claude was trained on copyrighted songs and more on how Anthropic obtained the underlying files.
Who it affects
Named directly: Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, sued alongside the company; Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell and other unnamed music publishers, as plaintiffs. The same lawyers also represent Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group in a related case filed in January. More broadly, songwriters and authors whose lyrics, sheet music or books may sit in Claude's training data have a stake in the outcome, as do other AI labs facing similar torrenting-based claims, and Anthropic's customers if the company faces further large penalties or has to change how it sources training data.
How to use it
There is no product or feature to use here. The practical read for businesses building on Claude or evaluating any AI vendor is the legal test already taking shape: training on copyrighted material and acquiring it through piracy are being treated as two separate questions, and only the second one has cost Anthropic money so far, $1.5 billion in the Bartz case. Anyone weighing legal exposure around an AI vendor's training data should watch how that distinction plays out here, not just whether the underlying works were copyrighted.
How solid is it
The account comes from a single TechCrunch report, which says the suit was first surfaced by Music Business Worldwide and includes a direct, on-the-record statement Anthropic emailed to TechCrunch, which firms up Anthropic's side of the story. The allegations themselves come from the plaintiffs' complaint and are unproven claims, not established fact. No calendar date is given for the filing, only "late Friday," so the exact filing date cannot be pinned down from this report. The $1.5 billion figure, by contrast, is solid: it is a decided outcome from the separate, already-decided Bartz case, not a number tied to this new suit.
Risks and caveats
Everything above beyond the Bartz outcome is an allegation from one side's court filing, not a ruling. The report does not name the specific songs, books or musical works said to have been torrented, nor does it say how many "other music publishers" joined Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell. No damages figure is stated for this new case, and there is no court date, hearing schedule or word on whether it will be consolidated with the Bartz or Concord/Universal Music Group cases. Only an unnamed Anthropic spokesperson is quoted in response; neither Amodei nor Mann has commented individually.
“a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works”
— the music publishers' lawsuit against Anthropic