Sony and Warner publishers sue Anthropic over torrented lyrics
Confirmed
The takeaway
On Aug 28, 2026 the publishing arms of Sony Music and Warner Music, with Hipgnosis and other publishers, sued Anthropic and, personally, CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Ben Mann in the Northern District of California.
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- 3 of 5
- Last verified
- 15 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra120 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.559 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Argon150 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.789 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 59 days before it.
Key facts
- Case: Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC v. Anthropic PBC, N.D. Cal. (San Jose) No. 5:26-cv-09217, filed Aug 28, 2026; assigned to Judge Eumi K. Lee (CourtListener)
- Plaintiffs include Sony Music Publishing, Colgems-EMI, Warner Chappell Music and Warner subsidiaries, Hipgnosis Songs Group and Hipgnosis/Lyra entities (complaint caption and docket entry); counsel Oppenheim + Zebrak and Pryor Cashman
- Defendants: Anthropic PBC, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. The complaint says Mann, ‘at Dr. Amodei’s direction’, used BitTorrent in June 2021 to download at least five million pirated books from LibGen, and that two million more were torrented in July 2022, citing the Bartz fair-use ruling
- Works named include ‘Livin’ On a Prayer’, ‘September’, ‘Great Balls of Fire’, ‘Ramblin’ Man’ and ‘Hallelujah’; songbooks such as The Beatles Complete Scores; full list in Exhibit A (complaint)
- Relief: up to $150,000 statutory damages per infringed work and an order barring use of the works (Reuters via Al Jazeera, Claims Journal)
- Anthropic’s response: it will defend itself and argues AI training is fair use, citing the judge in the authors’ case (Al Jazeera)
- Other publisher suits against Anthropic on CourtListener: Concord Music Group v. Anthropic (filed Oct 2023 in M.D. Tenn., No. 3:23-cv-01092, then N.D. Cal. No. 5:24-cv-03811), a second Concord Music Group v. Anthropic (N.D. Cal. 5:26-cv-00880, Jan 28, 2026), BMG Rights Management v. Anthropic (N.D. Cal. 5:26-cv-02334, Mar 17, 2026) and Round Hill (Aug 17, 2026)
What happened
Five weeks after the $1.5B authors’ settlement was approved, two of the three major music publishers sued Anthropic over the same pirated-book downloads, arguing that the books included songbooks and sheet music. Unusually, the complaint also names Amodei and Mann as individual defendants, saying the torrenting would not have happened without their direction. It adds output claims (Claude reproducing lyrics) and DMCA claims about copyright-management information.
Why it matters
The authors’ settlement released only claims of class members over listed books; rightsholders of other content in the same downloads (music publishers here) are now suing separately, and Universal’s Concord case from 2023 is still running. Naming the founders personally raises the stakes before Anthropic’s planned IPO. The 2023 Concord case and the BMG case have no entries of their own; this entry lists their dockets.
Sources
6 sources from 4 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
6 sources: 4 primary, 2 press
Primary
- Complaint: Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC v. Anthropic PBC (Dkt. 1, Aug 28, 2026)storage.courtlistener.com, docs
- CourtListener docket: Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC v. Anthropic PBCcourtlistener.com, docs
- CourtListener docket: Concord Music Group v. Anthropic PBC (N.D. Cal. 5:24-cv-03811)courtlistener.com, docs
- CourtListener docket: BMG Rights Management (US) LLC v. Anthropic PBC (N.D. Cal. 5:26-cv-02334)courtlistener.com, docs
Press
Changes
- Filed from two leads lines (Sony Music Publishing v. Anthropic; Concord/UMG case status); complaint read on CourtListener