Sony, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging "blatant theft" of intellectual property
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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Photo: Ruhani Kaur/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Some of the world's largest music publishers filed a blockbuster lawsuit against Anthropic late Friday night, alleging "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history."
Why it matters: The suit is the opening salvo in what is now likely to be a yearslong fight over music, AI, and how intellectual property is protected in a new era of technology.
Driving the news: Units of Sony Music and Warner Music filed the suit in federal court in northern California late Friday night, naming Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants.
The big picture: The Sony/Warner lawsuit is notable because it's broad.
- It alleges Anthropic unlawfully trained its models off "tens of thousands" of music publishers' copyrighted compositions, whereas other lawsuits have focused on a narrower set of works.
- BMG's lawsuit against Anthropic, for example, claims infringement against 493 compositions.
What they're saying: "Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic's 'Claude' series of artificial intelligence ('AI') models," the plaintiffs write in the 48-page complaint.
- They also claim that Anthropic pirated thousands of copyrighted musical works and ask for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages per infringed work.
Thought bubble from Axios' Sara Fischer: The music's copyright system is structurally complicated, which can expose AI companies to multiple lawsuits for the same song.
- One song can have several copyrighted components, such as the lyrics, sound recording, or composition, that can be split among different copyright holders, including artists, publishers, and labels.
- Commercially released songs that require individual copyrights give plaintiffs a strong case to make for statutory damages, which don't require a copyright holder to prove their financial losses in court.
Between the lines: This suit is not the first time Anthropic has been accused of piracy to train its models.
- In September 2025, the company agreed to the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history, a $1.5 billion deal with authors and publishers.
Yes, but: The music industry is notorious for being litigious when it comes to copyright, as anyone who was around in the heyday of Napster and LimeWire can attest.
For the record: Anthropic was not immediately available to comment on the suit.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional information throughout.
