Anthropic Must Face Claims Over Users’ Song-Lyric Infringement

Anthropic PBC failed to escape claims from music publishers that the AI developer knew its users were infringing copyrighted song lyrics through its flagship AI model, Claude.

Judge Eumi K. Lee denied Anthropic’s motion to dismiss claims of contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in an order filed Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Lee dismissed secondary infringement and DMCA claims from the music publishers’ original complaint in March, but ruled differently this time, saying the plaintiffs’ amended complaint plausibly alleged Anthropic could have known its users were using Claude to get song lyrics, that it could have profited from that infringing activity, and that it removed copyright management information to conceal any infringement. Anthropic didn’t try to axe the direct copyright infringement claim in its motion to dismiss filed in May.

The music publishers, including Concord Music Group Inc. and Universal Music Corp., pointed to Anthropic’s move to set up guardrails to prevent users from generating infringing outputs as evidence it knew its users were using Claude to extract song lyrics, Lee said. Although Anthropic disputed those allegations, Lee said at the point of a motion to dismiss, she must accept the publishers’ “non-conclusory allegations as true, although Anthropic’s factual contentions may be revisited at a later stage” of litigation.

Lee said it’s “plausible” that users’ access to lyrics through Claude benefits Anthropic—an element of vicarious infringement—because, “as Publishers contend, Claude would not be as popular and valuable as it is but for ‘the substantial underlying text corpus that includes Publishers’ copyrighted lyrics.’”

The music publishers sued Anthropic in October 2023 and have a pending motion to amend their complaint again, this time to add a piracy claim. Anthropic reached a settlement deal in August in another copyright lawsuit over Claude’s training filed by a group of authors last year.

Oppenheim & Zebrak LLP, Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP, and Cowan Liebowitz & Latman PC represent the music publishers. Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP and Latham & Watkins LLP represent Anthropic.

The case is Concord Music Group Inc. v. Anthropic PBC, N.D. Cal., No. 5:24-cv-03811, order filed 10/6/25.