Sony and Warner Lead Massive Copyright Lawsuit Against AI Startup Anthropic
The AI industry’s copyright battle has escalated. On August 28, 2026, a total of 35 music publishing companies, spearheaded by Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, launched a comprehensive copyright lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The extensive 48-page complaint implicates not just the company, but also CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as personal defendants. The publishers accuse Anthropic of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading tens of thousands of copyrighted musical compositions. This includes iconic songs used to train its flagship Claude AI models.
The lawsuit further alleges that Claude can reproduce copyrighted lyrics in its outputs. This poses a direct threat to the licensing markets for publishers and songwriters. The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed composition. In addition, they demand up to $25,000 for each alleged removal of copyright management information. This puts Anthropic’s potential exposure solidly in the multi-billion-dollar range.
This recent action follows closely on the heels of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement in the landmark Bartz v. Anthropic authors’ case. Anthropic has voiced its disagreement with the claims and has expressed its intention to vigorously defend itself in court. Source: TechCrunch