Sony Music and Warner Sue Anthropic Over a 'Brazen Campaign' of IP Theft

Music publishers accuse Anthropic and its co-founders of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works to train Claude — the broadest copyright case yet against the lab.

Published: 2026-09-02 Category: Quick Take Sources: TechCrunch

The Lawsuit

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and numerous other music publishers have sued Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, alleging the AI lab conducted a "brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works." The lawsuit, filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was first reported by Music Business Worldwide. The publishers accuse Anthropic of "blatant theft" by using thousands of copyrighted works to train its AI model Claude. "We disagree with the publishers' claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court," an Anthropic spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

Building on a $1.5 Billion Precedent

This isn't the first intellectual property lawsuit Anthropic has faced. Some of the same lawyers behind this lawsuit also represent Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group in a case filed in January and led the Bartz v. Anthropic case, in which a group of authors accused Anthropic of using copyrighted works to train products like Claude. Anthropic was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in the landmark Bartz case after a judge ruled that while it was legal for the AI lab to use copyrighted works, it was not legal to acquire that content through piracy.

What's Different This Time

While the cases make similar arguments, there are key differences. This latest lawsuit is particularly broad and builds off the other cases, including by accusing Anthropic of "flagrant piracy" through illegal torrenting to obtain millions of copies of books, including those that contain lyrics and sheet music. The distinction matters: the Bartz ruling established that using copyrighted material to train a model can be legal, but the method of acquisition — piracy — is not. That framing is exactly what the publishers are leaning on here.

The Method Becomes the Case

The legal question is no longer simply whether AI can train on copyrighted works; it is increasingly about how the training data was obtained. If the publishers can prove Anthropic acquired works through torrenting, the Bartz precedent gives them a direct path. For the industry, this is the shape of the copyright fight to come: not a philosophical debate about whether machines can learn from the world, but a forensic accounting of exactly how the data got into the model.

Based on reporting by TechCrunch.