Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have joined forces to sue Anthropic, residence of Claude, over what the publishers name “one of many largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of mental property in historical past.”
The grievance – obtained by MBW, and which you’ll learn in full right here – additionally names Anthropic Co-Founder and Chief Government Officer Dario Amodei and Co-Founder Benjamin Mann as particular person defendants.
It was filed on Friday (August 28) within the US District Courtroom for the Northern District of California.
With Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music launching their very own swimsuit as plaintiffs, the publishing arms of all three main music firms at the moment are litigating towards the Claude maker.
Common Music Publishing Group, Harmony Music Group, and ABKCO sued in Nashville in October 2023 over roughly 500 songs, in a case later transferred to California.
The identical publishers filed a second swimsuit in January 2026 masking greater than 20,000 works and searching for over USD $3 billion.
BMG introduced a 3rd case in March 2026 over 493 compositions, and Spherical Hill Music filed a fourth on August 17.
Sony and Warner are searching for statutory damages of as much as $150,000 per work willfully infringed, plus as much as $25,000 for every alleged removing of copyright administration info.
Among the many innumerable copyrighted works Defendants illegally harvested to gas Claude are 1000’s upon 1000’s of Music Publishers’ copyrighted musical compositions, together with such beloved songs as “Ain’t No Mountain Excessive Sufficient,” “All I Need for Christmas is You,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Right here Comes Santa Claus,” and “Paper Rings.” In blatant violation of copyright regulation, Defendants have unlawfully acquired troves of Music Publishers’ musical compositions, after which systematically copied these works a number of instances, together with because the inputs to coach Anthropic’s Claude AI fashions and within the outputs these fashions generate.”
Sony Music Publishing/Warner Chappell Music grievance
The grievance identifies “tens of 1000’s” of the publishers’ allegedly infringed compositions – a characterization that will place Anthropic‘s theoretical statutory publicity within the multi-billion-dollar vary.
Sony Music Publishing (SMP) and Warner Chappell Music (WCM) are demanding a jury trial, and are being represented within the swimsuit by Oppenheim + Zebrak, LLP – the lead counsel for the Harmony/UMG vs Anthropic case – and by Pryor Cashman LLP.
SMP and WCM are additionally demanding that each one infringing copies of the works are destroyed, and that Anthropic provides an account of Claude‘s coaching knowledge.
The swimsuit brings 4 counts: (i) direct infringement by torrenting, towards all three defendants; (ii) contributory infringement by torrenting, towards Amodei and Mann; and, towards Anthropic alone, (iii) direct infringement and (iv) removing or alteration of copyright administration info.
SMP and WCM’s grievance alleges that in June 2021, Mann used BitTorrent to obtain at the very least 5 million pirated books from Library Genesis, and that Anthropic staff torrented at the very least two million extra from Pirate Library Mirror in July 2022.
Each figures are drawn from findings in Bartz v. Anthropic, the authors’ case during which one other choose in the identical district described Anthropic‘s conduct as “simple piracy however at large scale.”
“Dr. Amodei and Mr. Mann are personally liable for his or her respective roles on this unlawful torrenting of pirated copies of Music Publishers‘ works from LibGen and PiLiMi,” the grievance states.
The submitting cites inside Anthropic materials unsealed in Bartz, together with Mann‘s description of LibGen as “sketchy AF.”
It additionally states that Anthropic’s personal Archive Workforce had described LibGen as a “blatant violation of copyright.”
“[we] convey this motion to carry accountable the culprits behind one of many largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of mental property in historical past. Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have carried out a brazen marketing campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on an enormous scale with a purpose to develop, function, and reap huge earnings from Anthropic’s “Claude” sequence of synthetic intelligence (“AI”) fashions.”
Sony Music Publishing/Warner Chappell Music grievance
The publishers additional allege that Anthropic scraped lyrics from licensed websites together with MusixMatch and LyricFind, ran a “damaging scanning” operation on second-hand books, and used Frequent Crawl, The Pile, and Books3.
On the final of those, the grievance says Mann downloaded pirated books “to keep away from the difficulty of paying for them, hoping they could show helpful for coaching massive language fashions (LLMs) or one thing else” – quoting Bartz.
On the scanning, it quotes a 2024 Anthropic planning doc unsealed in Bartz: “We don’t need it to be recognized that we’re engaged on this.”
The publishers additional allege that Claude reproduces their lyrics verbatim in outputs, and that guardrails added after earlier litigation (from UMG/Harmony/ABKCO) are “simply circumventable by merely ‘re-prompting’” the mannequin.
Track titles named within the physique of the submitting as being allegedly infringed embrace Ain’t No Mountain Excessive Sufficient, All I Need for Christmas is You, Eye of the Tiger, Livin’ On a Prayer, September, Hallelujah, Uptown Funk, and Taylor Swift‘s Paper Rings.
The grievance leans closely on Anthropic‘s $1.5 billion settlement with ebook authors, agreed in September 2025 over the identical torrenting conduct.
“However Anthropic clearly considers that to be simply the price of doing enterprise on condition that its complete enterprise mannequin continues to be constructed on copyright theft,” it states. “And $1.5 billion is clearly not a big sufficient settlement to discourage infringing conduct by an organization that has parlayed such mass infringement right into a staggering $2-trillion-dollar valuation.”
That valuation determine is attributed within the submitting to an August 2026 Forbes report on a projected October IPO.
The publishers additionally take goal at Anthropic‘s positioning: “Regardless of branding itself because the ‘moral AI firm,’ Anthropic has repeatedly acted in ways in which belie that picture, prioritizing aggressive benefit over compliance with the regulation.”
The Sony and Warner Chappell grievance provides: “Music Publishers acknowledge the potential of moral AI expertise, they usually have entered licenses allowing the approved use of their musical compositions in reference to AI.
“It stays essential, nonetheless, that AI improvement happens responsibly and on phrases which are agreeable to rightsholders and in a fashion that protects their rights, livelihoods, and the inventive industries as a complete.
“Even essentially the most revolutionary of applied sciences should develop inside the bounds of the regulation, and Anthropic‘s Claude fashions are not any completely different.”Music Enterprise Worldwide
