Sony and Warner Sue Anthropic Over Alleged 'Blatant' IP Theft
AI-generated image · US National Wire
Music publishers target AI lab for using pirated works to train Claude models, marking a new escalation in copyright litigation.
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, naming Anthropic and co-founders Benjamin Mann and Dario Amodei as defendants. The publishers allege a "brazen campaign" of illegally scraping, torrenting, and downloading thousands of copyrighted musical compositions to train the Claude AI models, which they describe as one of the largest intellectual property thefts in history, according to reporting from Engadget, TechCrunch, and The Verge.
The complaint specifically alleges that Benjamin Mann used BitTorrent to download more than five million pirated books, while other employees downloaded at least two million more from Pirate Library Mirror. The suit further claims Anthropic scraped lyrics from LyricFind and MusixMatch, sites that pay for licenses. Examples of infringed works cited by The Verge include Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings," Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," and Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer."
Sony and Warner are seeking a jury trial and damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, plus $25,000 for each instance where copyright management information was removed. Given the allegation of "tens of thousands" of works, total damages could reach several billion dollars, as reported by The Verge and Engadget.
This follows a pattern of legal challenges for the AI lab. Engadget and TechCrunch report that Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group filed a separate suit in January seeking over $3 billion for the illegal download of more than 20,000 songs. Additionally, Anthropic previously settled the Bartz v. Anthropic case with a group of authors for $1.5 billion after a judge ruled that acquiring training content through piracy was illegal, according to TechCrunch. Other suits have been filed by BMG, Round Hill Music, and ABKCO, per The Verge.
An Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company disagrees with the claims and intends to defend itself robustly in court.