Sony Music and Warner Chappell filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging infringement of tens of thousands of copyrighted musical works. The complaint seeks statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work, with additional penalties of up to $25,000 for each instance where identifiable copyright information was removed. Legal experts estimate potential damages could reach several billion dollars if the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs and awards the maximum penalties.
The suit names Anthropic as a defendant along with co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann individually. According to the filing, Mann allegedly used BitTorrent to download over five million pirated books, while company employees downloaded at least two million additional books from Pirate Library Mirror. The complaint further alleges that Anthropic employees scraped song lyrics from licensed platforms including MusixMatch and LyricFind. Named compositions allegedly found in the company’s training data include works by Marvin Gaye, Bon Jovi, Earth Wind & Fire, Leonard Cohen, and Taylor Swift.
The lawsuit represents the latest in a series of high-profile copyright actions against Anthropic. The company recently settled with the publishing industry for $1.5 billion and faces multiple other lawsuits from music rights holders including Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO, BMG, and Round Hill Music. Anthropic has not yet publicly responded to the latest filing.
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