Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have sued AI developer Anthropic for alleged mass copyright infringement, claiming the company used tens of thousands of musical compositions without authorization to train its Claude model.
The complaint was filed Friday, August 28 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. It also names Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as individual defendants.
Publishing sector litigation widens
With this filing, publishing divisions of all three major music companies are now suing Anthropic. Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO filed a suit in 2023 and again in January 2026, while BMG and Round Hill Music filed separate actions earlier this year.
The complaint identifies “tens of thousands” of allegedly infringed musical compositions. Songs cited include:
- Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
- All I Want for Christmas Is You
- Eye of the Tiger
- Livin’ On a Prayer
- September
- Uptown Funk
- Taylor Swift’s Paper Rings
Claims and requested remedies
The lawsuit alleges four counts:
- direct infringement by torrenting against Anthropic, Amodei and Mann
- contributory infringement by torrenting against Amodei and Mann
- direct infringement against Anthropic
- removal or alteration of copyright management information against Anthropic
The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per wilfully infringed work, plus up to $25,000 for each alleged removal of copyright management information. That places potential statutory exposure in the multi-billion-dollar range. They also seek destruction of all infringing copies of the works and an account of Claude’s training data, and have demanded a jury trial.
