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 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.
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Key Facts
- Fact 1: In Brief Posted: 11:41 AM PDT · August 29, 2026 Image Credits:Ruhani Kaur/Bloomberg / Getty Images 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.
- Fact 2: 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.
In Brief Posted: 11:41 AM PDT · August 29, 2026 Image Credits:Ruhani Kaur/Bloomberg / Getty Images 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. Anthropic could not be reached for comment prior to publication. TechCrunch will update this article if the company responds.
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