Sony Music and Warner sue Anthropic alleging piracy of copyrighted works for Claude
TechCrunch reported (Aug 29) that Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and other music publishers sued Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging a “brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works” used to train Claude. The complaint—first reported by Music Business Worldwide and filed late Friday—accuses Anthropic of “flagrant piracy” via illegal torrenting of millions of books that include lyrics and sheet music, building on Concord/UMG litigation and the landmark Bartz v. Anthropic case (where Anthropic was ordered to pay $1.5B after a judge held training on copyrighted works lawful but piracy-based acquisition unlawful). Anthropic said it disagrees and will defend itself robustly. Distinct from Bartz/Concord music suits and from Anthropic’s Aug 28 Pentagon supply-chain court win.






