Judge Lets Music Publishers Refile Claims Against Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei

The ruling, from US District Judge Eumi Lee of the Northern District of California, came at a hearing on motions to dismiss in the second lyrics case that Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord and ABKCO have brought against the AI company. The publishers are seeking statutory damages of more than $3 billion over roughly 21,000 works.

The case matters for Anthropic beyond its size. It is one of the largest copyright claims an AI developer faces, it names the chief executive personally, and Anthropic is preparing to go public, which makes contingent legal liabilities a question for investors.

Reports of the hearing differ on how Anthropic itself fared. Law360 reported that the judge dismissed the publishers' claims against both Anthropic and Amodei, with leave to amend. Courthouse News reported that Lee tentatively ruled from the bench to deny Anthropic's own motion to dismiss and granted only the partial dismissal sought by Amodei, also with leave to amend. A written order had not been published on the docket at the time of writing.

On Amodei, the accounts agree. According to Courthouse News, Lee said the publishers had not shown how Amodei committed direct infringement by approving the use of pirated material. The report said she also wanted more specific detail behind the torrenting allegation covering more than 20,000 works. Amodei's motion did not challenge the secondary infringement claims against him, so he remains in the case on those counts.

The publishers filed this second suit on January 28 after a judge refused to let them add piracy claims to their first case against Anthropic, which they brought in 2023. That case covers about 499 compositions and focuses on lyrics appearing in Claude's answers. The publishers have said they learned of the alleged torrenting from the summary judgment ruling in Bartz v. Anthropic, the authors' copyright case.

The new complaint alleges that Anthropic downloaded songbooks and lyrics from pirate libraries using BitTorrent and copied works to train Claude. An amended complaint filed in April added Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as individual defendants, over their alleged personal role in the decision to torrent material.

Anthropic's motion, filed on August 3, asked the court to throw out two parts of the case: the claim that Claude reproduces the publishers' lyrics in its outputs, and a claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that it stripped copyright management information from the works. The company argued that the complaint "never cites one instance of Claude reproducing a lyric", and said the DMCA claim fails because the publishers do not allege Anthropic held their complete compositions. Anthropic did not ask the court to dismiss the torrenting and training claims, which it is contesting.

The written order should show which output and DMCA claims survive, and how long the publishers have to file an amended complaint against Amodei. Judge Lee has also yet to rule on summary judgment in the first case.