Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theft

image via TechCrunch

August 29, 2026, 6:41 PM

• •The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
• •Plaintiffs include Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and other music publishers.
• •The publishers allege Anthropic used thousands of copyrighted works to train Claude.
• •Anthropic said it disagrees with the claims and will defend itself in court.
• •The article links the suit to earlier Anthropic copyright cases involving books, lyrics, and sheet music.

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and other music publishers have sued Anthropic and its co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann in federal court in California. The complaint alleges Anthropic illegally torrented, scraped, and downloaded copyrighted works, then used thousands of them to train its Claude AI model. Anthropic told TechCrunch it disagrees with the claims and plans to defend itself vigorously in court. The article says the case builds on earlier copyright disputes involving Anthropic, including litigation over whether acquiring training material through piracy is lawful.

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