Sony and Warner sued Anthropic, and named two founders personally
Music publishers have been suing AI companies for three years. This complaint does something the others did not: it names two of the founders personally.
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell filed in California federal court over tens of thousands of compositions, naming Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as defendants alongside the company. The complaint alleges lyrics and sheet music were taken from Library Genesis and the Pirate Library Mirror and scraped from Musixmatch and LyricFind. They are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus $25,000 for each removal of copyright information.
Why this one is different
The earlier music case, brought by Universal and others in 2023, covered around 500 songs and was about output: the model reproducing lyrics on request. This one is about acquisition, and it leans hard on Anthropic's own $1.5bn settlement with book authors from September 2025, which concerned the same torrented sources. The publishers are effectively arguing the company has already conceded the conduct once, for books, and that music was in the same haul.
The last case was about what the model said. This one is about where the data came from.
How we got here
- Oct 2023Universal, Concord and ABKCO sue Anthropic in Nashville over roughly 500 songs, focused on the model reproducing lyrics. Later moved to California.
- Sep 2025Anthropic settles with book authors for $1.5bn over torrented training data, without admitting liability.
- 29 Aug 2026Sony and Warner file over tens of thousands of compositions, name Amodei and Mann personally, and cite the book settlement throughout.
What it does and does not mean
None of this has been proven and Anthropic has not answered it. A complaint is one side's account, the $150,000 figure is a statutory maximum rather than a forecast, and naming founders personally is a pressure tactic as often as it is a serious theory of liability. What has changed regardless is the exposure: a settlement meant to close a question is being used as evidence in the next case, which is a cost of settling that few of these companies appear to have priced.