Sony Music and Warner Chappell are suing Anthropic

THE NEWS

What happened

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a major lawsuit against Anthropic in California, accusing the AI company of massive copyright infringement during its training data collection. The suit alleges illegal torrenting of millions of pirated books and scraping of licensed lyrics from platforms like MusixMatch to train their Claude models. Plaintiffs seek up to $150,000 per infringed work plus additional damages for stripped metadata, potentially totaling billions of dollars. The complaint specifically names Anthropic founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, alleging personal involvement in downloading pirated content. Named songs include hits by Marvin Gaye, Bon Jovi, Earth Wind & Fire, Leonard Cohen, and Taylor Swift.

CONTEXT

Why it matters

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in California, accusing the AI developer of one of the largest intellectual property thefts in history. The complaint alleges that Anthropic illegally torrented over five million pirated books and scraped lyrics from licensed platforms to train its Claude models. Co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann are named individually, with claims that Mann used BitTorrent for downloads. Plaintiffs seek up to $150,000 per infringed work plus additional damages for stripped metadata, potentially totaling billions of dollars. The suit specifically cites popular songs by Marvin Gaye, Bon Jovi, Earth Wind & Fire, Leonard Cohen, and Taylor Swift as being found in the training data. This legal action comes after Anthropic recently settled a separate $1.5 billion case with the publishing industry.

AT A GLANCE

Key facts

• Sony Music and Warner Chappell filed suit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
• The lawsuit alleges illegal torrenting of over five million pirated books by co-founder Benjamin Mann and two million more by employees.
• Plaintiffs claim Anthropic scraped lyrics from licensed sites like MusixMatch and LyricFind without proper authorization.
• Damages requested include up to $150,000 per copyrighted work and $25,000 for each instance of stripped copyright data.
• Total potential damages could reach several billion dollars if the court awards maximum amounts.
• The complaint names co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as individual defendants alongside the company.
• Specific songs cited in training data include 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough', 'Livin' On a Prayer', 'September', 'Hallelujah', and 'Paper Rings'.
• This follows a recent $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic reached with the publishing industry.