Sony And Warner vs. Anthropic Lawsuit Explained

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have sued artificial-intelligence company Anthropic and two of its co-founders, accusing the maker of Claude of illegally obtaining and using tens of thousands of copyrighted musical compositions to develop its AI models. The lawsuit, filed August 28, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Anthropic used pirated books, scraped lyric databases and other unauthorized sources containing copyrighted songs and lyrics. The publishers are seeking statutory damages that could reach billions of dollars and have demanded a jury trial. Anthropic disputes the allegations and says it intends to defend itself in court.

Sony Music And Warner Chappell Sue Anthropic

The Lawsuit Was Filed On August 28, 2026. Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and dozens of affiliated publishing companies filed the federal copyright action in California. [Court Records]

The Case Is Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC et al. v. Anthropic PBC et al. It was assigned case number 5:26-cv-09217 in the Northern District of California. [Court Records]

The Publishers Requested A Jury Trial. [Court Records]

Dario Amodei And Benjamin Mann Are Personally Named

Anthropic Is Not The Only Defendant. The complaint also names Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann individually. [Court Records] [Music Business Worldwide]

The Individual Claims Focus Heavily On How Anthropic Allegedly Acquired Pirated Material. The publishers say company leadership participated in decisions to obtain large collections of unauthorized books and other copyrighted material that could be used to develop AI systems. [Music Business Worldwide]

The Publishers Allege “Blatant Theft”

The Complaint Describes Anthropic’s Conduct As A Large-Scale Campaign Of Copyright Infringement. Sony and Warner accuse the company of illegally torrenting, scraping and downloading copyrighted works rather than licensing them from rights holders. [TechCrunch] [Music Business Worldwide]

The Publishers Say The Alleged Conduct Involves Tens Of Thousands Of Songs. The filing describes the songs identified in the complaint as examples rather than the complete set of works allegedly copied. [The Verge] [Music Business Worldwide]

Songs Named In The Lawsuit

The Complaint Identifies Some Of The Most Famous Songs In Popular Music. Examples include Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September,” Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” and Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings.” [Music Business Worldwide] [Business Insider]

The Lawsuit Concerns Musical Compositions Rather Than Only Sound Recordings. Music publishers control rights involving lyrics and composition, which are legally distinct from the copyright in a particular recorded performance.

Anthropic Allegedly Used Millions Of Pirated Books

The New Lawsuit Relies On Evidence That Emerged In Earlier Litigation Against Anthropic. Court records from the Bartz author copyright case documented Anthropic’s acquisition of millions of books from piracy libraries. [Music Business Worldwide]

The Publishers Allege Benjamin Mann Downloaded Approximately Five Million Books From Library Genesis. Earlier court filings say Mann used BitTorrent in June 2021 to obtain the LibGen collection. [Court Records]

The Collection Included Books Containing Lyrics And Musical Compositions. Sony and Warner argue that those embedded copyrighted works were copied along with the books. [Music Business Worldwide]

Another Two Million Books Allegedly Came From Pirate Library Mirror

Anthropic Employees Later Obtained Another Large Pirated Collection. Earlier litigation alleged that approximately two million books were acquired from Pirate Library Mirror, also known as PiLiMi. [The Verge] [Music Business Worldwide]

The Publishers Say Those Collections Were Warehoused For Anthropic’s AI Development. Their complaint alleges that copyrighted music embedded in those books was copied without authorization.

Internal Anthropic Messages Are Cited

The Lawsuit Draws On Internal Material Unsealed In Earlier Litigation. An Anthropic message cited in related court documents records Mann saying he was “currently pulling libgen” through torrenting. [Court Records]

Earlier Filings Say Anthropic Leadership Discussed The LibGen Download Before It Occurred. Those documents allege Mann discussed the proposal with Amodei, Anthropic Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan and other senior personnel. [Court Records]

Anthropic Allegedly Scraped Licensed Lyrics Websites

Sony And Warner Also Accuse Anthropic Of Copying Lyrics Directly From Online Databases. The complaint identifies MusixMatch and LyricFind among sources allegedly scraped by Anthropic. [Music Business Worldwide] [The Verge]

Those Services License Lyrics From Rights Holders. The publishers argue that the existence of lyrics on a licensed website does not give another company permission to scrape and reproduce them for AI development.

The Lawsuit Also Cites Common Crawl, The Pile And Books3

The Publishers Say Anthropic Collected Copyrighted Material From Several Large Internet And Machine-Learning Datasets. The complaint references Common Crawl, The Pile and Books3 in describing the sources allegedly incorporated into Anthropic’s data holdings. [Music Business Worldwide]

Books3 Was Widely Used In Early Generative-AI Research. The dataset contained nearly 200,000 books and was later removed from public hosting after copyright complaints.

Anthropic Allegedly Bought And Destroyed Books For Scanning

The Complaint Also References Anthropic’s Physical Book-Scanning Program. Anthropic previously bought books, removed their bindings, scanned their pages and discarded the physical copies to create digital training material. [Music Business Worldwide]

A Federal Judge Previously Distinguished The Purchased-Book Program From Anthropic’s Pirated Libraries. In the earlier Bartz litigation, Judge William Alsup ruled that training AI models on lawfully acquired books could qualify as fair use, while obtaining pirated copies to build a permanent central library was a separate infringement issue. [TechCrunch]

The Publishers Allege Claude Can Reproduce Lyrics

The Complaint Is Not Limited To How Anthropic Obtained Training Material. Sony and Warner also allege Claude can generate copyrighted lyrics or closely reproduce protected passages when users request them. [Music Business Worldwide]

The Publishers Say Claude Has Produced Verbatim Or Near-Verbatim Lyrics. They argue that this demonstrates copyrighted compositions remain represented within Anthropic’s systems in a way that can result in unauthorized reproduction. [The Verge]

The Lawsuit Challenges Claude’s Copyright Guardrails

Anthropic Added Restrictions Intended To Prevent Claude From Providing copyrighted song lyrics. Those measures followed earlier litigation from music publishers.

Sony And Warner Say The Restrictions Can Be Bypassed By Re-Prompting Claude. Their complaint alleges users can modify prompts and still cause the system to produce protected lyrics. [Music Business Worldwide]

Copyright Management Information Is Another Major Claim

The Publishers Accuse Anthropic Of Removing Copyright Management Information. Copyright-management information can include songwriter names, publishers, licensing information and other data identifying who owns a work.

The Claim Is Brought Under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The publishers allege that copyrighted text was copied into Anthropic datasets without accompanying ownership and attribution information. [The Verge]

The DMCA Allows Separate Monetary Damages For Improper Removal Of Such Information.

The Publishers Seek Up To $150,000 Per Copyrighted Work

Sony And Warner Are Seeking The Maximum Statutory Damages Available For Willful Copyright Infringement. Federal copyright law permits damages of up to $150,000 for each work when infringement is found to be willful. [The Verge] [Business Insider]

Because The Complaint Alleges Infringement Of Tens Of Thousands Of Compositions, Maximum Statutory Damages Could Reach Billions Of Dollars. The ultimate amount would depend on which copyrights are proven to have been infringed and what damages a court awards.

The DMCA Claims Could Add Additional Damages

The Publishers Are Also Seeking Up To $25,000 For Each Violation Involving Copyright Management Information. [The Verge]

Those Claims Could Be Significant If Applied Across Large Numbers Of Works.

The Publishers Want Anthropic To Destroy Infringing Copies

The Complaint Seeks More Than Financial Compensation. The publishers are asking the court for injunctive relief and destruction of copies of copyrighted material they allege were unlawfully obtained. [Music Business Worldwide]

They Also Seek Information About Anthropic’s Training Data And Data-Acquisition Methods. The requested relief includes an accounting related to the copyrighted material and its use. [Music Business Worldwide]

Anthropic Denies The Claims

Anthropic Says It Will Fight The Lawsuit. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Anthropic disagrees with the publishers’ allegations and intends to defend itself robustly. [TechCrunch]

Anthropic Already Faced A Similar Music Lawsuit

Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group And ABKCO Previously Sued Anthropic. Their original 2023 lawsuit accused Claude of producing copyrighted song lyrics without authorization.

That Case Initially Covered Approximately 500 Songs. It later moved from Tennessee to federal court in Northern California. [Music Business Worldwide]

Universal And Concord Filed A Much Larger Second Case

A Second Music-Publisher Lawsuit Was Filed In January 2026. Universal, Concord, ABKCO and affiliated publishers accused Anthropic of illegally acquiring more than 20,000 compositions through pirated book collections and other sources. [TechCrunch]

That Case Seeks More Than $3 Billion In Potential Damages. [TechCrunch]

Sony And Warner’s New Case Means Publishing Divisions Connected To All Three Major Music Companies Are Now In Copyright Litigation Against Anthropic. [Music Business Worldwide]

Earlier Court Ruling Found Anthropic Used Pirated Books

The Music Lawsuits Build On The 2025 Bartz v. Anthropic Copyright Case Brought By Authors. That litigation exposed extensive information about Anthropic’s acquisition of training data.

Judge William Alsup Found That Anthropic Had Obtained Millions Of Books From Piracy Sources. The court distinguished the creation of Anthropic’s permanent pirated book library from the later use of books to train AI models. [TechCrunch]

The Judge Ruled That AI Training On Lawfully Obtained Books Could Be Transformative Fair Use. The ruling did not give Anthropic permission to pirate books in order to obtain the underlying material. [TechCrunch]

Anthropic Agreed To A $1.5 Billion Authors Settlement

Anthropic Later Agreed To Pay $1.5 Billion To Resolve Claims From Authors Whose Books Were Included In Its Pirated Library. The settlement became one of the largest copyright settlements connected to generative AI. [TechCrunch]

The Sony And Warner Complaint Relies On Evidence Developed During That Litigation. The music publishers argue that some of the same pirated books also contained copyrighted lyrics, sheet music and other musical compositions belonging to them. [Music Business Worldwide]

Sony And Warner Are Also Fighting AI Music Generators

Sony Music Entertainment And Warner Records Have Separate Copyright Litigation Involving AI Music Generation. The major record companies have pursued companies including Suno over allegations that copyrighted sound recordings were used without authorization to train music-generating systems.

Those Cases Concern Different Copyrights. Record-company cases generally focus on sound recordings, while Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell’s Anthropic lawsuit centers on musical compositions, including lyrics and written music.

The Lawsuit Arrives During A Larger AI Copyright Battle

Publishers, Newspapers, authors, artists and other copyright owners have brought numerous cases against generative-AI companies. The disputes generally involve whether copyrighted material may be copied to build training datasets and whether model outputs infringe protected works.

Courts Have Begun Drawing Distinctions Between AI Training And How Training Material Is Acquired. Anthropic’s earlier litigation has become especially important because Judge Alsup treated transformative AI training differently from the act of downloading pirated books to create a permanent library. [TechCrunch]