Sony Warner Sue Anthropic Over Copyright Claims
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have sued Anthropic over alleged copyright infringement involving musical works and Claude. The lawsuit, filed on August 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, also names Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as defendants.
Publishers Allege Large-Scale Copyright Infringement
The publishers accuse Anthropic of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted material to develop its Claude AI models. Moreover, they allege that the company repeatedly copied protected works during the training process and in its model outputs.
The complaint identifies tens of thousands of musical compositions that the publishers say Anthropic infringed. These include well-known works such as “Eye of the Tiger,” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “All I Want for Christmas is You,” “September,” and “Paper Rings.” =
Furthermore, the lawsuit links the music claims to earlier allegations involving pirated books. The publishers say Anthropic personnel obtained millions of books through Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. They argue that some of those books contained lyrics and sheet music used in the alleged infringement.
Anthropic Disputes the Allegations
Anthropic has rejected the publishers’ claims. “We disagree with the publishers’ claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court,” an Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch.=
Meanwhile, the case follows several other copyright disputes involving Anthropic. In 2025, the company agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with authors after litigation over copyrighted books. A court had found that Anthropic’s acquisition of pirated material created a separate copyright problem from its use of lawfully obtained works for training.
Billions of Dollars at Stake
The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work found to have been willfully infringed. Additionally, they seek up to $25,000 for each alleged removal or alteration of copyright-management information.
However, those figures represent potential statutory maximums rather than an established financial liability. The case could therefore become another major test of how copyright law applies to AI training, data acquisition, and model outputs.
