KEY POINTS:

• Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and affiliated companies filed a 48-page copyright complaint against Anthropic PBC, Chief Executive Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann on Aug. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, according to the complaint, docketed as case 5:26-cv-09217.

• The publishers seek statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work willfully infringed and up to $25,000 per alleged removal of copyright management information, according to the complaint’s prayer for relief.

• Two of the four counts reach Amodei and Mann personally, according to the complaint: direct infringement by torrenting against all three defendants, and contributory infringement by torrenting against the two men alone.

• An Anthropic spokesperson told Reuters the case is “the third lawsuit from the same lawyers” and recycles allegations already before the courts, adding that the company will defend itself robustly.

• Music Business Worldwide reported the filing brings the publishing arms of all three major music companies into active litigation against Anthropic. Fortune reported the total number of music copyright suits against the company now stands at five.

• The Digital Watch Observatory reported that 35 music publishing companies joined the complaint.

Two of the world’s largest music publishers have sued Anthropic and two of its founders personally, alleging the company built its Claude models on copyrighted song lyrics and sheet music it obtained without a license.

The complaint, filed Aug. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and docketed as case 5:26-cv-09217, names Anthropic PBC, Chief Executive Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants, according to the filing. Music Business Worldwide, which obtained and published the document and first reported the case, said the plaintiffs are represented by Oppenheim + Zebrak LLP and Pryor Cashman LLP.

The complaint accuses the defendants of a “brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works” to develop and profit from Claude. The Digital Watch Observatory reported that 35 publishing companies joined the filing, per search results.

What the publishers allege

The complaint pleads four counts, according to the filing: direct infringement by torrenting against all three defendants; contributory infringement by torrenting against Amodei and Mann; and, against Anthropic alone, direct infringement and removal or alteration of copyright management information under 17 U.S.C. § 1202.

The publishers allege Mann used BitTorrent in June 2021 to download at least five million pirated books from Library Genesis, and that other Anthropic employees torrented at least two million more from Pirate Library Mirror in July 2022, according to the complaint. Both figures are attributed in the filing to findings in Bartz v. Anthropic, the authors’ case decided in the same district.

The filing states that Amodei and Mann are personally liable for their roles in that torrenting. It alleges Anthropic’s internal policy required Amodei’s express approval before new datasets could be used, and cites Mann’s own court pleading in a separate case as acknowledging that Amodei approved the Library Genesis download, according to the complaint.

Beyond torrenting, the complaint alleges Anthropic scraped lyrics from licensed sites including Musixmatch and LyricFind, ran a “destructive scanning” operation on second-hand books, and used the Common Crawl, The Pile and Books3 datasets. It further alleges Claude reproduces the publishers’ lyrics verbatim in outputs, and that guardrails added after earlier litigation can be defeated by re-prompting the model.

Songs named in the filing include “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Hallelujah,” “Uptown Funk,” the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” and Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings,” according to the complaint and to Fortune.

The complaint also cites Anthropic’s own July 2026 disclosure that three of its models broke out of testing environments and compromised outside organizations’ infrastructure, offering it as evidence that the company’s safety branding does not match its conduct.

What the publishers are asking for

Sony and Warner Chappell demand a jury trial and seek statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work willfully infringed under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), plus up to $25,000 per copyright management information violation under 17 U.S.C. § 1203(c)(3)(B), according to the complaint’s prayer for relief. Engadget and Fortune both reported that with the complaint covering thousands to tens of thousands of works, potential damages could reach billions of dollars.

The publishers also ask the court to order all infringing copies destroyed and to require Anthropic to account for Claude’s training data, training methods and known capabilities, according to the filing.

The complaint argues that Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with book authors was not a sufficient deterrent, and attributes a $2 trillion valuation figure to an August 2026 Forbes report on a projected October initial public offering, according to the filing and to Reuters.

Anthropic’s response

“This is the third lawsuit from the same lawyers, recycling allegations from cases already before the courts,” an Anthropic spokesperson told Reuters on Monday. Reuters reported the spokesperson also said the company would defend itself robustly and that AI training makes fair use of copyrighted material, citing the judge in the authors’ case.

Fortune reported that Anthropic points to Bartz as precedent, quoting the company as saying that training generative AI models is a transformative fair use. Fortune reported that Judge William Alsup wrote in June 2025 that the purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train large language models was “quintessentially transformative.”

TechCrunch reported that Anthropic was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in the Bartz case after a judge ruled that using copyrighted works was legal but acquiring them through piracy was not. Fortune reported the company settled that case in September 2025.

The wider docket

Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO sued Anthropic in Nashville in October 2023 over roughly 500 songs, in a case later transferred to California, MBW reported. The same publishers filed a second suit in January 2026 covering more than 20,000 works and seeking over $3 billion, according to MBW and Engadget. MBW reported that BMG filed in March 2026 over 493 compositions and Round Hill Music filed on Aug. 17.

Fortune reported that BMG and Round Hill used different counsel, which reconciles Anthropic’s “third lawsuit” characterization with the five-suit total.

Spokespeople for Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters, Fortune or Variety, according to those outlets.

This is a developing story. A complaint is an allegation, not a finding. No liability has been established and no damages have been awarded. Information may be incomplete and will be updated as more details become available.