Music Publishers Say They’re ‘Very Confident’ in Case Against Anthropic Despite Legal Setback

A federal court in California denied an injunction sought by music publishers in their copyright case against Anthropic on Tuesday. The injunction would’ve barred the AI company from using song lyrics to train the AI models that power its chatbot Claude. The music publishers first filed the suit in late 2023 and while this is a setback for the publishers, it’s just one battle in a much larger legal war between AI companies and copyright holders.

Concord, ABKCO Music & Records, and Universal Music first filed suit against Anthropic in October 2023, alleging that Claude’s responses to questions would include things identical or nearly identical to song lyrics. As the copyright holders, the music publishers argue that such use of their songs aren’t considered fair use under U.S. copyright law.

U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee wrote that although the publishers sought to clarify the scope of what they were asking for, their inclusion of 500 songs that were allegedly used by Anthropic wasn’t good enough, as it was conceded they were “illustrative and non-exhaustive,” according to court documents published by Court Listener.

“Publishers’ counsel could not say how many songs would be subject to the injunction,” the ruling states. “Moreover, the injunction would apply to songs that Publishers currently own and to an unknowable universe of songs that they may acquire while the injunction is in place. Publishers would also ‘update’ the list to add or remove songs as necessary. Publishers did not offer a concrete or definitive way for Anthropic—as the party subject to the injunction and the legal repercussions of a violation—to ascertain its parameters or comply with its terms.”

Anthropic told Gizmodo it was pleased with Tuesday’s ruling and believed its use of song lyrics should be considered fair use.

“We are pleased that the court did not grant the plaintiffs’ disruptive and amorphous request for interim relief in this case,” a spokesperson for Anthropic told Gizmodo via email. “As the case continues, we look forward to explaining why use of copyrighted material for training large language models aligns with fair use principles under copyright law.”

While the copyright holders lost this one round, they expressed confidence in the case moving forward.

“Despite the Court’s narrow ruling, we remain very confident in our case against Anthropic more broadly,” a representative for the publishers said in a statement to Music Business Worldwide.

“In response to our preliminary injunction motion,” the statement continued, “Anthropic had already conceded the merits of our claims against its infringing outputs of our copyrighted song lyrics, by entering into a stipulation requiring it to maintain ‘guardrails’ to prevent such infringing outputs, thereby resolving a critical aspect of the motion in our favor. The Court noted this factor as an important part of its preliminary decision.”