Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic for copyright infringement

Aug 29, 2026

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have sued Anthropic and its co-founders, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, alleging a massive campaign of copyright infringement. The federal lawsuit claims Anthropic illegally torrented and scraped tens of thousands of copyrighted compositions—including hits by Taylor Swift and Marvin Gaye—to train its Claude AI models. The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per song, which could total billions of dollars. Anthropic has denied the allegations and promised a robust defense.

Anthropic copyright infringement lawsuit

▪Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic and its co-founders, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, on August 28, 2026.
▪Anthropic stated that it disagrees with the publishers' claims and intends to defend itself robustly in court.

Alleged illegal training data acquisition

▪The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic co-founder Benjamin Mann used BitTorrent to download over five million pirated books, and employees downloaded at least two million more from Pirate Library Mirror.
▪The publishers allege that Anthropic scraped lyrics from Musixmatch and LyricFind, both of which pay to license and display those lyrics.

Scope of claimed copyright violations

▪Specific copyrighted songs named in the lawsuit include 'Eye of the Tiger,' 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough,' 'All I Want for Christmas Is You,' 'Paper Rings,' 'Livin' On a Prayer,' 'September,' 'Great Balls of Fire,' 'Ramblin' Man,' and 'Hallelujah.'
▪The publishers allege that Claude models generate identical or near-identical copies of copyrighted lyrics in response to user prompts, competing directly with human-made songs.
▪The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic unlawfully trained its Claude AI models on tens of thousands of copyrighted musical compositions.

Financial damages sought

▪The publishers are seeking up to $25,000 for each instance where Anthropic allegedly removed identifiable copyright management information.
▪Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each copyrighted composition used to train Claude.

Prior Anthropic copyright litigation

▪In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to a landmark $1.5 billion settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit brought by authors over pirated books used to train Claude.
▪Anthropic is facing separate music copyright lawsuits from other publishers, including BMG, Concord, Universal Music Group, ABKCO, and Round Hill Music.