Anthropic, Already Facing Lawsuits, Is Now in the Crosshairs of Sony and Warner

On August 28, Sony Music, Warner Chappell Music, and 35 affiliated music publishing entities filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Alongside Universal Music Group, which filed its own lawsuit earlier this year, the world’s three major music groups are now collectively taking on Anthropic.

This is far from Anthropic’s first copyright battle over the sources of its training data. In July, the company reached a $1.5 billion settlement with authors and publishers over allegations involving pirated books—the largest copyright litigation settlement in U.S. history. Four months ago, that massive payout seemed like the end of one legal headache. Now, it appears to have attracted a new wave of claimants.

What Exactly Did Claude Take?

The lawsuit describes Anthropic’s conduct as “one of the largest and most brazen ongoing acts of intellectual property theft in history.” The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic carried out a “rampant campaign of unlawful piracy, scraping, and downloading” of copyrighted works.

Specifically, Anthropic is accused of using torrent downloads, web crawlers, and other methods to acquire thousands of copyrighted musical works, including lyrics and sheet music, for training its Claude family of AI models.

The complaint provides further details. Co-founder Benjamin Mann allegedly used BitTorrent to download more than 5 million pirated books, while employees allegedly downloaded at least another 2 million works from other pirated repositories. Music publishers argue that these pirated books contained substantial amounts of song lyrics and sheet music.

The allegedly infringed works include well-known songs such as Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer, Earth, Wind & Fire’s September, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, and Taylor Swift’s Paper Rings.

Anthropic is also accused of scraping lyrics from websites including Musixmatch and LyricFind, which have licensing agreements with music companies.

Billions of Dollars at Stake

The plaintiffs are seeking up to $150,000 in damages for each infringed work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance in which copyright management information was allegedly removed.

If the court accepts the plaintiffs’ claims, the potential damages could reach billions of dollars.

Anthropic has already responded. A company spokesperson said: “We disagree with the publishers’ claims and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in court.”

The Aftermath of the $1.5 Billion Settlement

In last year’s Bartz v. Anthropic book copyright case, a judge made a crucial distinction: using copyrighted works to train AI models may qualify as fair use, but obtaining those works through piracy is unlawful.

That ruling ultimately formed the backdrop to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement.

But the settlement also sent a clear signal to copyright holders: Anthropic can pay—and it can pay big.

Music publishers appear to have taken notice.

Some of the attorneys involved in the latest lawsuit have previously represented Universal Music Group in its case against Anthropic and played leading roles in the Bartz litigation. The legal offensive is becoming increasingly coordinated.

A War Over Who Gets a Slice of the AI Economy

For music publishers, this lawsuit is about more than damages. Their broader objective is to establish a new “AI training license” market for lyrics, turning AI training into another source of licensing revenue.

From iTunes to TikTok, music publishers have repeatedly found ways to establish new licensing models as technology evolves. AI may simply be the next frontier.

For Anthropic, meanwhile, the timing could hardly be worse.

The company is reportedly preparing for an IPO, and litigation could expose internal decision-making records and details about its training data, potentially affecting both the listing process and its valuation.

With the $1.5 billion book settlement behind it and lawsuits from all three major music groups now piling up, the legal defenses around “fair use” are being tested from every direction.

Caught in the middle are the actual songwriters.

While publishers and AI companies battle over potentially billions of dollars in court, the people who wrote the songs may end up fighting for whatever is left on the table.