BMG Rights Management has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic, the AI giant recognized for its Claude AI chatbot. The complaint, lodged on Tuesday, March 17, in the Northern District of California, alleges that Anthropic unlawfully copied and utilized BMG’s musical compositions, including lyrics, to train its large language models.
The 47-page lawsuit cites 493 allegedly infringed works, among them well-known songs like “What a Wonderful World,” “Kryptonite,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Uptown Funk,” and “Sympathy for the Devil.” BMG claims that Claude has reproduced lyrics from these compositions in its outputs and that Anthropic has engaged in the unlawful downloading of pirated books that contain its works from illegal “shadow” libraries.
BMG’s filing accuses Anthropic of having “unlawfully copied, prepared derivative works based on, and distributed musical compositions” owned by the music company. The lawsuit asserts that Anthropic’s actions directly violate copyright laws and have caused significant harm to BMG and the songwriters it represents. “Generations of inventors have brought revolutionary new products to market while complying with copyright law,” the complaint states. “Anthropic’s rapid development of its new technology is no excuse for its egregious law-breaking.”
A spokesperson for BMG remarked, “As detailed in our summons and complaint, Anthropic’s practice of training AI models on copyrighted works sourced from unauthorized torrent sites, among other acts, stands in direct opposition to the standards required of any responsible participant in the AI community.” The spokesperson emphasized the importance of protecting the rights of songwriters, recording artists, and producers, declaring that the unauthorized use of their work is unacceptable.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of similar actions against Anthropic from other major music publishers, including a complaint from Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord, and ABKCO filed in October 2023. This case was expanded significantly in January 2026, involving more than 20,000 songs and potential statutory damages exceeding $3 billion.
BMG, which controls rights to nearly four million musical compositions, has brought five specific claims against Anthropic: direct copyright infringement through training and outputs, direct infringement via torrenting, contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and removal or alteration of copyright management information (CMI).
The complaint alleges that Anthropic scraped copyrighted lyrics from the internet and utilized torrenting for pirated books, including songbooks and sheet music, from illegal repositories like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. BMG asserts that Anthropic employed extraction tools to strip copyright-identifying information from these works, viewing such information as “useless junk.”
“Anthropic’s founders claimed to be starting a different kind of company, one with AI safety and research at the forefront that would mitigate AI’s risks. But in its pursuit of those goals, Anthropic ran roughshod over the rights of countless creatives and rightsholders.”
The filing further claims that Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, “personally discussed and authorized” the torrenting of pirated books and opted for this method over proper licensing to avoid a “legal/practice/business slog.” BMG indicated that it sent a cease and desist letter to Anthropic in December 2025, which reportedly received no response.
Anthropic has yet to publicly comment on the lawsuit. The complaint notes Anthropic’s disclosed valuation of $380 billion following a $30 billion Series G funding round announced in February 2026, alongside a reported run-rate revenue of $14 billion, which has reportedly increased more than tenfold annually over the past three years.
BMG has requested that its case be assigned to the same judge overseeing two pending actions against Anthropic in the Northern District of California. In October 2025, a judge had previously denied Anthropic’s motion to dismiss the UMPG/Concord/ABKCO case. Notably, Anthropic had settled a separate lawsuit concerning AI training with a group of authors for $1.5 billion.
This latest lawsuit highlights ongoing tensions between the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence and established intellectual property laws, raising critical questions about the balance of innovation and creator rights in the digital age.
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