Major music publishers file copyright lawsuit against anthropic

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint alleges that the artificial intelligence company engaged in systematic copyright infringement to develop its Claude model series.

Scope of the legal claims

The publishers are seeking damages for tens of thousands of copyrighted works. Statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work are being requested, alongside additional penalties for the alleged removal of copyright management information. If the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs and awards the maximum amounts, total damages could reach several billion dollars.

The lawsuit extends beyond corporate liability to name co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as individual defendants. Specific allegations include the acquisition of millions of pirated books via torrent networks and the scraping of lyrics from licensed platforms.

Named works and industry context

The legal filing explicitly lists numerous well-known songs found within the training data, including:

• Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
• Livin' On a Prayer by Bon Jovi
• September by Earth, Wind & Fire
• Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
• Paper Rings by Taylor Swift

This filing represents the latest in a series of legal challenges facing artificial intelligence developers regarding training data acquisition. Universal Music Group and various other publishers have previously brought similar actions across the industry to address the use of protected creative works without authorization.