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Sony Music and Warner Chappell Sue Anthropic for Copyright Infringement

🔄 Updated 23d ago — new reporting from The Verge
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Key points

  • Sony Music and Warner Chappell filed a lawsuit against Anthropic.
  • The suit alleges use of "tens of thousands" of copyrighted works.
  • Damages sought could reach billions of dollars.
  • Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann are also named.
  • The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
  • The lawsuit was filed on Friday.
  • The lawsuit alleges Anthropic used torrented music to train its Claude AI model.
  • The publishers are seeking up to $150,000 for each infringed work.
  • The publishers are seeking $25,000 for each instance of removing copyright management information.
  • The publishers are seeking a jury trial.
  • The compositions include Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, and Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger.
  • The lawsuit claims Anthropic reproduced lyrics in AI responses.
  • The lawsuit claims Mann and Anthropic downloaded at least 7m copies of books from pirate websites.
  • EMI is also suing Anthropic.
  • Anthropic previously paid authors $1.5 billion for pirating 7 million books.
  • Anthropic has a $2 trillion valuation.
  • Anthropic settled a copyright class action suit last year.
  • A judge ruled training AI models on copyrighted material is legal under fair use.
  • The settlement received final approval in July.
  • Authors of nearly 500,000 titles will be paid $3,000 for each pirated work.
  • If a book is in-print with a traditional publisher, the money is split 50-50.
  • If a book was self-published or rights reverted, the author gets the entire payment.
  • April Henry reported HarperCollins claimed one of her reverted books.
  • Anthropic faces a class action lawsuit regarding its Claude Max subscription plan.
  • The lawsuit alleges deceptive advertising of usage limits for Claude Max.
  • The Claude Max subscription costs $100-$200 per month.
  • Attorneys Monica Vaca and Kati Daffan filed the lawsuit.
  • Vaca and Daffan previously worked at the Federal Trade Commission.

Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Filed

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have initiated legal action against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit claims Anthropic used "tens of thousands" of copyrighted musical works without authorization to train its artificial intelligence models.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per copyrighted work, in addition to up to $25,000 for each instance where identifiable copyright data was removed. If the court rules in favor of Sony and Warner and awards the maximum amounts, the total damages could amount to several billion dollars.

Allegations Against Anthropic and Founders

The complaint describes Anthropic's actions as "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history." It specifically names Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as individual defendants.

The suit alleges that Benjamin Mann downloaded over five million pirated books via BitTorrent, and that other Anthropic employees downloaded at least two million more from Pirate Library Mirror. It also claims that Anthropic scraped lyrics from licensed sites like MusixMatch and LyricFind.

Previous Legal Challenges

This lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal challenges for Anthropic. The company recently settled a lawsuit with the publishing industry for $1.5 billion. It has also faced multiple lawsuits from Universal Music Group, Concord, and ABKCO, as well as separate suits from BMG and Round Hill Music.

Specific Works Cited

The lawsuit identifies specific songs found within Anthropic’s training data. These include "Ain’t No Mountain High Enough" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Bon Jovi’s "Livin’ On a Prayer," Earth, Wind & Fire’s "September," Leonard Cohen’s "Hallelujah," and Taylor Swift’s "Paper Rings."

Updates

🕒 2026-09-08 · new reporting from The Verge
  • Anthropic faces a class action lawsuit regarding its Claude Max subscription plan.
  • The lawsuit alleges deceptive advertising of usage limits for Claude Max.
  • The Claude Max subscription costs $100-$200 per month.
  • Attorneys Monica Vaca and Kati Daffan filed the lawsuit.
  • Vaca and Daffan previously worked at the Federal Trade Commission.
🕒 2026-09-06 · new reporting from TechCrunch
  • Anthropic settled a copyright class action suit last year.
  • A judge ruled training AI models on copyrighted material is legal under fair use.
  • The settlement received final approval in July.
  • Authors of nearly 500,000 titles will be paid $3,000 for each pirated work.
  • If a book is in-print with a traditional publisher, the money is split 50-50.
  • If a book was self-published or rights reverted, the author gets the entire payment.
  • April Henry reported HarperCollins claimed one of her reverted books.
🕒 2026-08-31 · new reporting from Ars Technica
  • EMI is also suing Anthropic.
  • Anthropic previously paid authors $1.5 billion for pirating 7 million books.
  • Anthropic has a $2 trillion valuation.
🕒 2026-08-31 · new reporting from Guardian Technology
  • The compositions include Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, and Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger.
  • The lawsuit claims Anthropic reproduced lyrics in AI responses.
  • The lawsuit claims Mann and Anthropic downloaded at least 7m copies of books from pirate websites.
🕒 2026-08-29 · new reporting from TechCrunch, Engadget
  • The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
  • The lawsuit was filed on Friday.
  • The lawsuit alleges Anthropic used torrented music to train its Claude AI model.
  • The publishers are seeking up to $150,000 for each infringed work.
  • The publishers are seeking $25,000 for each instance of removing copyright management information.
  • The publishers are seeking a jury trial.

✨ This summary was generated by AI from the outlets' reporting listed below. It is not independently verified and may contain errors — check the original sources. How BrevFeed works →

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How outlets covered it

Anthropic is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that its Claude Max subscription plan deceptively advertises usage limits. Subscribers claim the advertised "5x" or "20x" usage increases are misleading due to fine print regarding five-hour session windows and weekly limits, leading to less actual usage than expected.

Authors are reporting that publishers are making claims on their portions of the Anthropic AI copyright settlement, even for works where rights have reverted or for a larger share than stipulated. This issue stems from the $1.5 billion settlement for training AI models on copyrighted material, where authors are to receive payments for nearly 500,000 pirated titles.

Sony, EMI, and Warner Chappell are suing Anthropic, alleging the AI company illegally torrented thousands of their copyrighted musical compositions to train its AI models. This lawsuit follows a previous $1.5 billion settlement where Anthropic admitted to pirating over 7 million books.

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the AI company used tens of thousands of copyrighted songs without permission to train its Claude AI models. The lawsuit claims Anthropic scraped lyrics from various sources and reproduced them in AI responses, seeking billions in damages for copyright infringement.

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the company illegally used thousands of copyrighted musical compositions to train its Claude AI models. This legal action claims "blatant violation" of copyright law and seeks significant damages, highlighting ongoing legal challenges for AI developers regarding training data acquisition.

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and other music publishers have sued Anthropic, alleging the AI lab used illegally obtained copyrighted works, including torrented music, to train its Claude AI model. This lawsuit expands on previous intellectual property claims against Anthropic, focusing on the method of content acquisition for AI training data.

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the AI company used "tens of thousands" of copyrighted works without permission to train its Claude AI models. The suit seeks up to $150,000 per work, potentially totaling billions, and names Anthropic's co-founders as individual defendants, claiming they were involved in illegal downloading of content.