Warner Chappell Music has joined Sony Music Publishing in a federal lawsuit against Anthropic, the company behind Claude. It was filed in the Northern District of California on August 28. The complaint also names CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as individual defendants. The publishing arms of all three major music groups are now in litigation with the AI company.
Copyright Infringement of Tens of Thousands of Songs
Warner Chappell and Sony allege that Anthropic used tens of thousands of their compositions without permission. The songs include “Eye of the Tiger,” “Uptown Funk,” Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings,” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” They seek up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work. They’re also seeking up to $25,000 for each removal of copyright management information, which could push potential damages into the billions. The publishers want infringing copies destroyed, a full account of Claude’s training data, and a jury trial.
Copyright Infringement Claims Alleged in Lawsuit
The suit has four counts. They claim direct infringement by torrenting against all three defendants and contributory infringement against Amodei and Mann. Against Anthropic alone, they claim direct infringement and removal of copyright management information. Citing findings from the authors’ Bartz case, the publishers claim Mann downloaded millions of pirated books in 2021. The lawsuit also claims that employees obtained millions more in 2022. They further allege that Anthropic scraped lyrics sites, scanned second-hand books, and that Claude can reproduce lyrics verbatim, with guardrails easily bypassed by re-prompting.
The complaint argues that Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with authors was merely a cost of doing business. The AI company has a reported $2 trillion valuation ahead of a projected IPO scheduled for October.
Warner Chappell and Sony stress they aren’t opposed to AI. They say they’ve already licensed works for authorized AI use but insist development must respect rightsholders and the law.