Judge allows most of Reddits lawsuit against Anthropic to proceed

A San Francisco County Superior Court judge allowed three of Reddit's five claims against Anthropic to proceed in an order dated Sept. 17, overruling Anthropic's demurrer and advancing breach of contract, interference with contract, and violation of California's unfair competition law. Judge Harold Kahn dismissed Reddit's unjust enrichment and trespass to chattels claims as too vague but gave Reddit until Oct. 16 to refile them, and rejected Anthropic's argument that Reddit's User Agreement was an unenforceable "browsewrap" agreement, citing Reddit's allegation that Anthropic scraped the site more than 100,000 times after Reddit's CEO publicly called out the behavior. Reddit filed the suit in June 2025, accusing Anthropic of using automated bots to access its content without permission and training its Claude chatbot on Reddit users' personal data without consent.

Judge allows most of Reddit's lawsuit against Anthropic to proceed Chance Townsend https://mashable.com/author/chance-townsend Mother Jones . Read Full Bio https://mashable.com/author/chance-townsend Reddit's https://mashable.com/category/reddit lawsuit accusing Anthropic https://mashable.com/category/anthropic of illegally scraping user comments to train its Claude chatbot has cleared another hurdle. A San Francisco County Superior Court judge has allowed three of the platform's five claims to proceed while trimming back two others. In an order dated Sept. 17 https://webapps.sftc.org/ci/CaseInfo.dll?SessionID=43A9B505C43E05A0395760B4E4826914F5DE8C2B&URL=https%3A%2F%2Fimgquery.sftc.org%2FSha1 newApp%2Fmainpage.aspx%3FWeb Server%3Dimgquery.sftc.org%26MINDS Server%3Dhoj-imx-01%26Category%3DC%26DocID%3D10437644%26Timestamp%3D20260919085438%26Digest%3D9a302a39a0641a7d92b007ce32a272b91587cf47 and filed the following day, Judge Harold Kahn overruled Anthropic's demurrer, a legal challenge arguing that even if Reddit's allegations are true, they don't amount to a valid claim. The judge will allow three of Reddit's claims against Anthropic to move forward: breach of contract, interference with contract, and violation of California's unfair competition law. Two other claims, unjust enrichment and trespass to chattels, were tossed out, but the judge will give Reddit a chance to fix and refile them by Oct. 16. The case originated from a complaint Reddit filed in June 2025, when the company accused Anthropic of using automated bots to access its platform's content without permission and training Claude on the personal data of Reddit users without their consent. You May Also Like At the time, Reddit's chief legal officer Ben Lee said AI companies should not be allowed to scrape people's information and content without clear limitations on how that data can be used, according to the Associated Press https://apnews.com/article/reddit-sues-ai-company-anthropic-claude-chatbot-f5ea042beb253a3f05a091e70531692d . Reddit noted it had separately struck licensing deals in 2024 with companies including Google https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/company-announcements/expanded-reddit-partnership/ and OpenAI https://openai.com/index/openai-and-reddit-partnership/ that it said would allow it to enforce protections such as users' right to delete their content. Terms of Use https://www.ziffdavis.com/terms-of-use and Privacy Policy https://www.ziffdavis.com/ztg-privacy-policy . Kahn also rejected Anthropic's argument that Reddit's User Agreement was an unenforceable "browsewrap" agreement. The AI company tried to argue that Reddit's terms of service don't constitute a binding contract because users never explicitly click "I agree." The judge pointed to Reddit's allegations that Anthropic kept scraping the site more than 100,000 times even after Reddit's CEO publicly called out the behavior — evidence, he said, that Anthropic knew exactly what it was doing. As stated earlier, Kahn dismissed Reddit's unjust enrichment and trespass claims, finding them too vague as written, but allowed the company to refile with more specificity. A Reddit spokesperson said in a statement: "This ruling sends a strong message – AI companies don't get a free pass to ignore the law. AI companies cannot scrape data without a license in violation of basic contract law, user privacy commitments and fair business practices. As we look ahead to the next phase of this lawsuit, Reddit remains committed to holding unauthorized scrapers accountable and to protecting the trust of Reddit users." Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and Mother Jones . In his free time, he cooks, loves to sleep, and greatly enjoys Detroit sports. If you have any tips or want to talk shop about the Lions, you can reach out to him on Bluesky @offbrandchance.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/offbrandchance.bsky.social , by email at \ email protected\ https://mashable.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection 2c4f444d424f490258435b425f4942486c56454a4a414948454d024f4341 , or on Signal at 224-417-6628.