Sony and Warner Sue Anthropic Over Claude’s Training Data in Copyright Clash

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that the Claude software was trained using copyrighted works obtained through illegal torrenting, scraping and direct downloads.

A New Front in the Copyright War

The complaint, lodged in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, represents the broadest challenge yet to how AI firms gather training data, accusing Anthropic of a "brazen campaign" of piracy.

Allegations About Claude’s Training Data

According to the filing, Anthropic’s co‑founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann assembled millions of copies of lyrics, sheet music and other protected texts via torrent sites and web scrapers to build Claude.

Legal Precedents and Financial Impact

Earlier this year the same legal team acted for Universal Music Group and Concord Music Group in a similar suit that led to the Bartz v. Anthropic ruling. In that case the court held that while using copyrighted material for AI training may be lawful, acquiring it via piracy is not, resulting in a $1.5 billion judgment against Anthropic.

■Thousands of copyrighted works obtained through illegal torrents

■Massive collection of copies for model training

■The prior Bartz decision and its $1.5 billion award

■The current suit’s broader scope and "flagrant piracy" claims

Market participants are watching closely, as the outcome could reshape licensing practices for content creators and impose significant cost burdens on AI‑driven firms, potentially affecting short‑term earnings while influencing long‑term investment in the sector.