Jump to content

Sony Music Publishing et al v Anthropic PBC et al

From AI Law Wiki

AI-generated text. This page was generated using artificial intelligence.

Case Information
Case name Sony Music Publishing et al v. Anthropic PBC et al[1]
Court U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California[1]
Docket 5:26-cv-09217[1]
Filed August 28, 2026[1]
Judge(s) Not identified in the sources reviewed.
Plaintiffs Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC; Warner Chappell Music, Inc.; affiliated publishers listed in the complaint[1]
Defendants Anthropic PBC; Dario Amodei; Benjamin Mann[1]
Case type Civil copyright action[1]
Claims / issues Copyright infringement involving musical compositions and lyrics[1]
Status Complaint filed August 28, 2026. Later developments have not been verified.[1]

Sony Music Publishing et al. v. Anthropic PBC et al. is a federal copyright action alleging unauthorized copying and use of musical compositions in the development and operation of Anthropic’s Claude models.[2]

Allegations

The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic obtained protected lyrics and sheet music through BitTorrent downloads from LibGen and PiLiMi, web scraping, third-party datasets, and destructive scanning of physical books.[2] They allege that Anthropic copied tens of thousands of musical compositions in model training and that Claude generated verbatim, near-verbatim, derivative, and competing lyric outputs.[2]

The complaint alleges that Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann directed or approved torrenting activity, and that Anthropic removed or altered copyright-management information while processing training material and generating outputs.[2]

Claims and relief

The complaint asserts direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and removal or alteration of copyright-management information under 17 U.S.C. § 1202.[2] The plaintiffs seek statutory or actual damages, attributable profits, injunctive relief, attorneys’ fees and costs, and a jury trial.[2]

Significance

The action challenges both alleged input-stage copying for Claude training and alleged output-stage reproduction of protected lyrics.[2]

See Also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Court filing / case record, reviewed September 7, 2026
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC et al. v. Anthropic PBC et al., Complaint, No. 5:26-cv-09217 (N.D. Cal. filed August 28, 2026)
Retrieved from "https://ailawwiki.com/index.php?title=Sony_Music_Publishing_et_al_v_Anthropic_PBC_et_al&oldid=3675"