BMG Joins the List of Companies Suing Anthropic

BMG Rights Management has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that the AI company illegally copied nearly 500 of its musical works — including lyrics to well‑known songs such as What a Wonderful World, Uptown Funk, and Sympathy for the Devil — to train its Claude models. The complaint accuses Anthropic of scraping copyrighted lyrics from the internet and torrenting pirated books and songbooks from illegal “shadow libraries,” then stripping copyright‑identifying information before using the material in training data. BMG argues that Claude has reproduced protected lyrics in its outputs, demonstrating direct infringement.

The filing portrays Anthropic’s conduct as systematic and deliberate, alleging that CEO Dario Amodei personally approved the torrenting of pirated materials to avoid the legal/practice/business effort of proper licensing. BMG asserts that Anthropic’s rapid growth — including a $380 billion valuation and $14 billion in run‑rate revenue — has been built on uncompensated exploitation of copyrighted works. The company emphasizes that it sent a cease‑and‑desist letter in December 2025 that went unanswered, and that Anthropic pays nothing to BMG or its songwriters despite using their works to train and generate outputs.

This lawsuit follows two earlier actions brought by Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord, and ABKCO, which together cover more than 20,000 songs and seek billions in statutory damages. BMG’s complaint brings five claims, including direct infringement, contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and removal of copyright management information. While BMG stresses that generative AI can benefit the music industry when properly licensed, it argues that Anthropic’s practices violate copyright law and harm creators. Anthropic has not yet publicly commented, and BMG has requested that the case be assigned to the same judge overseeing the other publisher lawsuits.

The use of AI in the music industry is rapidly evolving, while the law tends to respond at a snail’s pace. If you have concerns about protecting your music from being ripped off by AI companies, reach out to the Yosick Law team.