Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theft
In Brief Posted: 11:41 AM PDT · August 29, 2026 Image Credits:Ruhani Kaur/Bloomberg / Getty Images Kirsten Korosec Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theft Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell and numerous other music publishers have sued…
In Brief Posted: 11:41 AM PDT · August 29, 2026 Image Credits:Ruhani Kaur/Bloomberg / Getty Images Kirsten Korosec Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theft 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, which was 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 sent to TechCrunch. 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. 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. Article was updated to include Anthropic’s comment. Topics AI, Anthropic October 13 – 15 San Francisco Don’t miss out. The startup community will gather to answer a pivotal question: How do you build sustainably in the AI era? REGISTER NOW Newsletters See More Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Related AI An Anthropic researcher just gave us a peek at self-improving AI Russell Brandom 1 day ago AI Open-weight AI companies are the Valley’s hottest acquisition targets Tim Fernholz 1 day ago Government & Policy Anthropic gets its first court win over the Pentagon’s supply-chain risk label Rebecca Bellan 2 days ago Latest in AI In Brief Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theft Kirsten Korosec 10 hours ago Biotech & Health “We’re not doing 30 bets a year”: Vijay Pande on betting small after running $4 billion at a16z Connie Loizos 11 hours ago AI Nvidia’s AI advantage is moving beyond the GPU Russell Brandom 16 hours agoSource: TechCrunch — Published — Category: Business