How much money are Sony and Warner asking for?

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music ask for up to $150,000 for each work infringed on purpose, plus up to $25,000 for each time Anthropic allegedly stripped copyright management information. Music Business Worldwide calls the total a multi-billion-dollar claim, because tens of thousands of compositions are named. A jury trial is requested.

How is this different from the $1.5 billion Anthropic books settlement?

The 2025 Bartz settlement covered books and authors. This case covers musical compositions and the publishers who own them, and it adds a claim the books case did not press: that Anthropic scraped licensed lyric sites MusixMatch and LyricFind, and that Claude can be prompted to repeat lyrics word for word.

Why are Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann named personally?

The complaint names Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann on Count II, contributory infringement by torrenting. Naming individuals is a way to argue that leadership knew about and enabled the downloading, rather than treating it as a company-level act. Counts III and IV are pleaded against Anthropic alone.

Has Anthropic responded to the lawsuit?

An Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch: "We disagree with the publishers' claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court." Anthropic has not conceded any of the four counts. The case is at the complaint stage, so no court has weighed the evidence or ruled on whether training on the compositions was lawful.

Is this the first music copyright case against Anthropic?

No. The legal tracker Chat GPT Is Eating the World counts this as the 13th copyright suit against Anthropic. BMG filed over 493 compositions in March 2026 and Round Hill Music filed on August 17, 2026. What makes the Sony and Warner filing bigger is scale: two of the largest publishers, acting together, over tens of thousands of songs.

Sony Music Publishing · 2026-08-28 · major

Sony and Warner sue Anthropic — the fight moves to song lyrics

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music sued Anthropic on August 28, 2026 in the Northern District of California, saying Claude was trained on tens of thousands of copyrighted songs pulled from torrents and lyric sites.

Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei speaking on stage — TechCrunch

Two of the biggest music publishers say Anthropic torrented and scraped their songs to train Claude.

Quick facts

Plaintiffs	Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music
Defendants	Anthropic, Dario Amodei, Benjamin Mann
Court	N.D. California
Filed	August 28, 2026
Counts	4 (torrenting, contributory, direct, CMI removal)
Damages sought	Up to $150,000 per work; $25,000 per CMI removal
Sites named	MusixMatch, LyricFind

What is it?

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a copyright complaint against Anthropic in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on August 28, 2026. The publishers say Anthropic ran "a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale" to train Claude. Co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann are named as defendants on one of the four counts.

How does it work?

The complaint splits the alleged conduct into four counts: direct infringement by torrenting, contributory infringement by the two co-founders, direct infringement by Anthropic, and removal of copyright management information. That last count matters because it does not require proving the model reproduces a song — only that ownership data was stripped from the files. The publishers also point at licensed lyric databases MusixMatch and LyricFind as scraping targets, and say Claude can be prompted to return lyrics word for word.

Why does it matter?

A ruling in this case would set a price on music training data for every lab, not just Anthropic. The publishers seek up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work across tens of thousands of compositions, which is the kind of number that pushes labs toward paid licensing deals instead of open scraping. Teams building on Claude should expect more pressure on data provenance disclosure, and anyone shipping lyric-adjacent features should watch the verbatim-output claim closely.

Who is it for?

AI product teams, legal and policy watchers, music tech builders

Frequently asked questions

How much money are Sony and Warner asking for?: Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music ask for up to $150,000 for each work infringed on purpose, plus up to $25,000 for each time Anthropic allegedly stripped copyright management information. Music Business Worldwide calls the total a multi-billion-dollar claim, because tens of thousands of compositions are named. A jury trial is requested.
How is this different from the $1.5 billion Anthropic books settlement?: The 2025 Bartz settlement covered books and authors. This case covers musical compositions and the publishers who own them, and it adds a claim the books case did not press: that Anthropic scraped licensed lyric sites MusixMatch and LyricFind, and that Claude can be prompted to repeat lyrics word for word.
Why are Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann named personally?: The complaint names Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann on Count II, contributory infringement by torrenting. Naming individuals is a way to argue that leadership knew about and enabled the downloading, rather than treating it as a company-level act. Counts III and IV are pleaded against Anthropic alone.
Has Anthropic responded to the lawsuit?: An Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch: "We disagree with the publishers' claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court." Anthropic has not conceded any of the four counts. The case is at the complaint stage, so no court has weighed the evidence or ruled on whether training on the compositions was lawful.
Is this the first music copyright case against Anthropic?: No. The legal tracker Chat GPT Is Eating the World counts this as the 13th copyright suit against Anthropic. BMG filed over 493 compositions in March 2026 and Round Hill Music filed on August 17, 2026. What makes the Sony and Warner filing bigger is scale: two of the largest publishers, acting together, over tens of thousands of songs.

Try it

Read the filed complaint: https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/COMPLAINT-in-Sony_Music_Publishing_US_LLC_e.pdf