Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a lawsuit against Anthropic and two of its co-founders on August 28. The suit accuses the company of engaging in a large-scale pattern of digital piracy to gather copyrighted content for training its AI tools. The publishers claim that Anthropic downloaded and scraped thousands of copyrighted works without permission. They allege the company used illegal torrenting to collect thousands of copies of music, including songs with lyrics and sheet music.
The lawsuit describes Anthropic’s actions as a form of piracy on a massive scale, according to thurrott.com. According to the complaint, Anthropic’s use of copyrighted material amounts to one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history. The music publishers are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work and $25,000 for each instance where copyright information was altered, according to a report from The News International. The publishers also want to gain access to discovery rights to determine the full scale of this theft.
This is not the first lawsuit involving Anthropic, Google, or other tech companies involving intellectual property claims, TechCrunch reported. Lawyers representing the music publishers also represent Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group in a similar case filed earlier this year. That previous case led to a ruling that while using copyrighted works for AI training may be legal, acquiring them through piracy is not.
Anthropic has said it disagrees with the claims and plans to defend itself in court. The company is reportedly preparing for a public offering and is seeking a valuation of around $2 trillion. The new lawsuit builds on earlier legal actions by expanding the scope to include alleged illegal torrenting of books and music.
This case is part of a broader trend where publishers and creators are taking legal steps against AI companies using copyrighted content without consent.
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