Rightsholders connected to Elvis Presley‘s song catalog have sued Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, alleging copyright infringement involving lyrics to 274 songs Presley recorded. The complaint seeks damages and claims that together exceed US$48.6 million.
Who is suing
The lead plaintiff is ABG EPE IP LLC, part of Authentic Brands Group. The entity controls Presley’s name and likeness and holds a share of publishing rights in songs he recorded.
The other plaintiffs are:
- Raleigh Music Publishing
- Abilene Music
- Jason Simeon Aberbach
- Trusts connected to the Aberbach family
- A trust connected to Luigi Creatore, who co-wrote “Can’t Help Falling in Love”
What the complaint alleges
The plaintiffs allege Anthropic copied the lyrics of the 274 songs to train its AI models, without authorization or payment. They also allege Claude generates copies of the lyrics and derivative works in response to user prompts.
The works named in the complaint include “All Shook Up,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “A Little Less Conversation” and “Return to Sender.”
The complaint was filed on October 23 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
Damages and other relief sought
The plaintiffs are seeking actual damages and Anthropic’s profits. Alternatively, they seek statutory damages of up to US$150,000 per work willfully infringed. The complaint puts the statutory damages claim for the 274 works at US$41.1 million.
Two additional counts under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act seek US$685,000 and US$6.85 million, respectively:
- The first concerns the alleged circumvention of logins, paywalls, bot-detection systems and other barriers to access lyrics and streaming platforms.
- The second concerns the alleged removal of copyright management information, including song titles, songwriter credits and publisher details, before training.
Across the three counts, the figures pleaded come to just over US$48.6 million.
The plaintiffs are also seeking a court order to stop the alleged infringement and to require Anthropic to surrender unauthorized copies of the songs for impoundment or destruction.
