Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a lawsuit on August 29, 2026, against Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann, alleging the company illegally torrented, scraped, and downloaded tens of thousands of copyrighted songs to train Claude's AI models. The publishers called it "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts" of intellectual property.
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Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic, Dario Amodei, and Benjamin Mann, alleging tens of thousands of copyrighted songs were used to train Claude's LLMs (Tim Ingham/Music Business Worldwide) https://www. musicbusinessworldwide.com/now -sony-music-publishing-and-warner-chappell-sue-anthropic-in-multi-billion-dollar-lawsuit-one-of-the-largest-and-most-blatant-ongoing-thefts-of-intellectual-pr
Some of the world's largest music publishers filed a blockbuster lawsuit against Anthropic late Friday night, alleging "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history." Why it matters: The suit is the opening salvo in what is now likely to be a yearslong fight over music, AI, and how intellectual property is protected in a new era of technology. Driving the
Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and affiliated music companies sued Anthropic in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging the AI company used copyrighted lyrics and sheet music without permission to develop and operate Claude models [thenextweb.com#1][digitaltrends.com#1][businessinsider.com#1][mashable.com#1][tribune.com.pk#1]. The complaint also name
"In the # lawsuit ... the # music companies claim that # Anthropic has carried out 'a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale' to train its popular # Claude AI models. Sony and Warner accused Anthropic of having 'reaped enormous profits' from the stolen music." # law # copyright # AI --- https:// mashable.com/tech/anthropic-su ed-by-s