Three major music publishers filed a federal lawsuit Friday against Anthropic, accusing the AI company of using "thousands upon thousands" of copyrighted songs to train its Claude models without permission. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, demands a jury trial and seeks statutory damages of up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work.
Sony Music, Warner Chappell Music, and other labels brought the action, which was first reported by Music Business Worldwide. The lawsuit means the publishing arms of all three major music companies have now taken legal action against Anthropic.
"Defendants can no longer hide their extraordinary theft, and their mass infringement is now well-documented," the suit said, adding that another court in the district had "recently described Anthropic's actions as 'straightforward piracy but at massive scale.'"
Escalating legal pressure
The new case follows a series of similar actions. Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group, and ABKCO sued Anthropic in October 2023 over roughly 500 songs, then filed a second suit this year covering more than 20,000 works and seeking over $3 billion. BMG sued in March over 493 songs, and Round Hill Music filed its own action earlier this month.
In addition to the infringement claims, the latest suit seeks up to $25,000 for each alleged removal or alteration of copyright management information. Anthropic told TechCrunch it disagrees "with the publishers' claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court."
Last month, Anthropic agreed to pay a $1.5 billion settlement in a separate case brought by authors who accused the company of using their works to train Claude. That settlement is believed to be the largest copyright award in U.S. history.
A divided judicial record
The courts have not spoken with one voice on AI training and copyright. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco called AI training "quintessentially transformative" and said copyright law "seeks to advance original works of authorship, not to protect authors against competition."
Days later, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, also in San Francisco, warned that widespread AI training could undermine the economic incentives that fuel human creative work. The conflicting rulings leave the legal landscape unsettled as more cases reach trial.
For legal professionals tracking AI-related disputes, the case offers a clear signal: copyright litigation against AI companies is no longer an outlier. The scale of the claims - and the size of the settlements - suggests this area will demand attention from AI for Legal practitioners for years to come.
Why this matters for legal professionals
The music publishers' suit and the authors' settlement establish a pattern: AI companies face mounting financial exposure for training data practices. The $1.5 billion settlement sets a benchmark that will likely shape negotiations in pending cases. Lawyers advising AI companies, content creators, or investors need to understand how courts are treating the transformative-use defense and where the line is being drawn between fair use and infringement.
For paralegals and legal support staff, AI-related discovery and document review in copyright cases will increasingly involve technical questions about model training pipelines. Familiarity with how these disputes are framed - and how judges are ruling - will be a practical skill. The AI Learning Path for Paralegals covers the basics of how AI systems work, which is useful context when reviewing technical evidence in cases like this one.
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