Music publishers fend off Anthropic’s bid to dismiss some AI copyright claims

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic lost a bid on Monday to dismiss parts of a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by music publishers over Anthropic’s alleged misuse of their song lyrics in its AI training.

U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee ruled that Universal Music Group, Concord and ABKCO can continue pressing their claims that Anthropic enabled its users to infringe their copyrights by reproducing their lyrics through its chatbot Claude without permission.

Spokespeople and attorneys for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the decision. The lawsuit is one of several high-stakes disputes between copyright owners and tech companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms over the unauthorized use of copyrighted works to train AI systems.

Amazon- and Google-backed Anthropic is the first major AI company to settle one of the disputes, agreeing in August to pay a group of authors $1.5 billion to resolve a class action lawsuit. The pending cases will likely revolve around whether AI systems make “fair use” of copyrighted material by studying it to learn to create new, transformative content. Lee’s ruling on Monday focused on the music publishers’ separate argument that Anthropic’s display of their lyrics by users’ request constituted contributory or vicarious copyright infringement.

The publishers sued Anthropic in 2023, alleging that it infringed their copyrights in lyrics from at least 500 songs by musicians including Beyonce, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys. Lee’s Monday decision rejected Anthropic’s request to dismiss the publishers’ secondary claims, finding the labels plausibly argued that Anthropic could have known of its users’ alleged infringement and profited from allowing it.

The judge had previously granted Anthropic’s motion to dismiss the claims but permitted the publishers to amend 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.