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Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a "brazen campaign" of intellectual property theft
TechCrunch • • business
Key Points:
- Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and other music publishers have sued Anthropic and its co-founders, alleging the AI lab engaged in illegal torrenting, scraping, and downloading of copyrighted works to train its AI model Claude.
- The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses Anthropic of "blatant theft" and "flagrant piracy" involving millions of copyrighted books, including lyrics and sheet music.
- Anthropic denied the allegations and stated it intends to defend itself robustly in court.
- This is not Anthropic’s first intellectual property lawsuit; the company previously faced a $1.5 billion judgment in the Bartz v. Anthropic case over using pirated copyrighted works for AI training.
- The new lawsuit is broader than previous cases, building on earlier claims but focusing specifically on illegal acquisition methods such as torrenting.
