Music Publishers Score Court Win as Anthropic Fails to Dismiss Copyright Claims

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has lost a bid to dismiss portions of a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by major music publishers over alleged misuse of song lyrics in its AI training.

US District Judge Eumi Lee ruled that Universal Music Group, Concord and ABKCO may continue pressing claims that Anthropic allowed users to reproduce their lyrics through its chatbot Claude without permission.

Spokespeople and attorneys for the companies did not immediately comment on the ruling. The lawsuit is part of a series of high-profile disputes between copyright holders and tech companies -- including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta -- over the use of copyrighted material to train AI systems.

Anthropic, backed by Amazon and Google, previously became the first major AI company to settle one of these disputes, agreeing in August to pay $1.5 billion to a group of authors in a class action lawsuit. Pending cases are expected to centre on whether AI systems’ use of copyrighted works qualifies as “fair use,” allowing them to study material to generate new, transformative content.

Judge Lee’s ruling specifically addressed the publishers’ argument that Anthropic’s display of their lyrics at users’ requests constituted contributory or vicarious copyright infringement. The publishers initially sued in 2023, claiming infringement of at least 500 songs by artists including Beyoncé, the Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys. The judge found that the labels had plausibly argued that Anthropic could have known about users’ alleged infringements and profited from allowing them.

The case is Concord Music Group Inc v. Anthropic PBC, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:24-cv-03811.