Sony and Warner Chappell are seeking up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each work they allege was willfully infringed, along with as much as $25,000 for each claimed removal of copyright management information. Given the number of compositions identified, the maximum theoretical damages could reach billions of dollars. “Among the innumerable copyrighted works Defendants illegally harvested to fuel Claude are thousands upon thousands of Music Publishers’ copyrighted musical compositions,” the publishers said in the complaint.
The filing expands the music industry’s legal fight with Anthropic. Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO sued the company in 2023 over roughly 500 songs before filing another case in January 2026 involving more than 20,000 works and seeking more than $3 billion. BMG followed with a lawsuit in March involving 493 compositions, while Round Hill Music filed another case on August 17. With Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell now entering the dispute, the publishing businesses of all three major music companies are pursuing litigation against Anthropic.
The latest complaint centers heavily on how Anthropic allegedly obtained material used in developing Claude. It accuses the company and its founders of using torrent sites and other sources to acquire copyrighted content rather than securing authorization from rights holders. According to the filing, Mann used BitTorrent in June 2021 to download at least five million pirated books from Library Genesis. The complaint also alleges Anthropic employees downloaded at least another two million books from Pirate Library Mirror in July 2022. Those allegations draw on findings from Bartz v. Anthropic, a separate case brought by authors. A judge in that case characterized Anthropic’s acquisition of certain material as “straightforward piracy but at massive scale.”
The publishers argue that Amodei and Mann should face personal liability for their alleged involvement. “Dr. Amodei and Mr. Mann are personally liable for their respective roles in this illegal torrenting of pirated copies of Music Publishers‘ works from LibGen and PiLiMi,” the complaint states.
The filing also cites internal Anthropic material disclosed in the Bartz litigation. Among it is Mann’s description of Library Genesis as “sketchy AF,” while the complaint says Anthropic’s Archive Team had separately described the service as a “blatant violation of copyright.”
Sony and Warner Chappell allege Anthropic obtained music through several additional channels. The complaint claims the company scraped lyrics from licensed services including MusixMatch and LyricFind, scanned second-hand books, and drew material from datasets and web sources including Common Crawl, The Pile and Books3. One Anthropic planning document from 2024, later disclosed through the Bartz case, stated: “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.”
The publishers also accuse Claude of reproducing copyrighted lyrics in its responses. They argue that protections Anthropic introduced following earlier litigation can be bypassed by prompting the model again.
The lawsuit contains four claims. Sony and Warner Chappell allege direct copyright infringement through torrenting against Anthropic, Amodei and Mann, along with contributory infringement claims against the two founders. Anthropic separately faces claims involving direct infringement and the removal or alteration of copyright management information.
The publishers are demanding a jury trial. They are represented by Oppenheim + Zebrak, which is also lead counsel in litigation brought by Concord and Universal Music Publishing Group against Anthropic, as well as Pryor Cashman.
The complaint also points to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with book authors, agreed in September 2025 over related torrenting activity, as evidence that questions around the company’s acquisition of training material extend beyond music. “But Anthropic clearly considers that to be just the cost of doing business given that its entire business model continues to be built on copyright theft,” the publishers allege.
Sony and Warner Chappell frame the dispute around licensing rather than opposition to AI itself. They said music publishers have already entered agreements allowing their compositions to be used with AI under authorized terms. “Music Publishers recognize the potential of ethical AI technology, and they have entered licenses permitting the authorized use of their musical compositions in connection with AI,” the complaint states.
The case therefore adds another front to Anthropic’s growing copyright litigation over Claude, with the latest plaintiffs focusing not only on model outputs but also on the methods the company allegedly used to assemble the material behind its AI systems.
This analysis is based on reporting from Music Business Worldwide.
Image courtesy of unite.ai.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
