{"slug": "sony-music-warner-sue-anthropic-alleging-copyright-infringement", "title": "Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging copyright infringement", "summary": "Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against Anthropic on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing the AI company of 'one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history' for using copyrighted songs to train its Claude AI models. The publishers seek $150,000 per work and $25,000 per copyright violation, potentially totaling billions, and also named Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and cofounder Benjamin Mann in the suit.", "body_md": "# Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging copyright infringement\n\nMusic giants Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have just filed a potentially multibillion-dollar lawsuit against [ Anthropic,](https://mashable.com/category/anthropic) and the publishers aren't mincing words.\n\nThe [ lawsuit](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/files/2026/08/COMPLAINT-in-Sony_Music_Publishing_US_LLC_e.pdf), filed Friday evening in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, calls Anthropic \"the culprits behind one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history.\" Sony and Warner also named Anthropic CEO and cofounder Dario Amodei and cofounder Benjamin Mann in the lawsuit.\n\n*Play our Big Guessing Game:*[Make your predictions now for a chance to win a new Apple Watch.](https://mashable.com/tech/big-guessing-game-apple-edition-round-3)*Time's running out!*\n\nIn the lawsuit, first reported by [ Music Business Worldwide](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/now-sony-music-publishing-and-warner-chappell-sue-anthropic-in-multi-billion-dollar-lawsuit-one-of-the-largest-and-most-blatant-ongoing-thefts-of-intellectual-property-in-history/), the music companies claim that Anthropic has carried out \"a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale\" to train its popular Claude AI models. Sony and Warner accused Anthropic of having \"reaped enormous profits\" from the stolen music.\n\n[Terms of Use](https://www.ziffdavis.com/terms-of-use)and\n\n[Privacy Policy](https://www.ziffdavis.com/ztg-privacy-policy).\n\n**You May Also Like**\n\nSony and Warner are seeking $150,000 in damages per work as well as $25,000 per copyright violation. The music companies, which are the second- and third-largest in the industry, allege that thousands of titles have been stolen, putting compensation in the range of billions of dollars.\n\nThe publishers have specifically accused Anthropic of \"blatant theft\" of song titles such as \"Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,\" \"All I Want for Christmas is You,\" \"Eye of the Tiger,\" and \"Here Comes Santa Claus.\"\n\nAnthropic has been hit with intellectual property lawsuits before. In fact, Sony and Warner's lawsuit directly references the [ $1.5 billion settlement](https://mashable.com/tech/judge-approves-1-5-billion-anthropic-copyright-settlement) that Anthropic reached with book publishers earlier this year in a similar case where the AI company was accused of training models on stolen works.\n\nThe world's largest music company, Universal Music Group (UMG), [ previously filed](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/umg-concord-and-abkco-sue-anthropic-for-3bn-in-what-could-be-single-largest-non-class-action-copyright-case-in-us-history/) copyright infringement lawsuits against Anthropic. UMG, along with Concord Music Group and ABKCO Music, filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in 2023 and again earlier this year. Their latest suit seeks more than $3 billion in damages.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sony-music-warner-sue-anthropic-alleging-copyright-infringement", "canonical_source": "https://mashable.com/tech/anthropic-sued-by-sony-music-warner-ai-copyright-infringement", "published_at": "2026-08-30 14:51:33+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-30 15:23:17.829091+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Sony Music Publishing", "Warner Chappell Music", "Anthropic", "Dario Amodei", "Benjamin Mann", "Universal Music Group", "Concord Music Group", "ABKCO Music"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sony-music-warner-sue-anthropic-alleging-copyright-infringement", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sony-music-warner-sue-anthropic-alleging-copyright-infringement.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sony-music-warner-sue-anthropic-alleging-copyright-infringement.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sony-music-warner-sue-anthropic-alleging-copyright-infringement.jsonld"}}