Music publishers file $3 billion lawsuit against Anthropic over pirated sheet music

Key Highlights

• Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord, and ABKCO filed a new lawsuit against Anthropic seeking $3 billion in damages
• The suit alleges Anthropic used BitTorrent to download sheet music from pirate sites like LibGen and PiLiMi
• Publishers identified 20,517 specific works, calculating statutory damages at $150,000 per willful infringement

Music publishers have launched a second legal attack against Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI. This new lawsuit shifts the focus from fair use arguments to allegations of mass piracy.

The Anthropic complaint PDF claims the AI company downloaded digitized sheet music and lyrics from “shadow libraries” using BitTorrent. This follows the original Anthropic lawsuit filed in October 2023.

The piracy angle changes everything. A federal judge ruled last year that downloading pirated books from shadow libraries undermined Anthropic’s fair use defense in a separate authors’ lawsuit.

That case led to a $1.5 billion Bartz settlement in September 2025. Publishers are now testing whether the same strategy works for music.

The court previously rejected publishers’ attempt to add piracy claim denied in October 2025. This new filing represents a fresh approach after mediation extended through August failed to produce a settlement.

The Billboard report notes this lawsuit follows the Judge Lee ruling that denied UMG’s preliminary injunction request in March 2025.

If you create music, register your works with the U.S. Copyright Office now. Billion-dollar settlements only pay creators who prove ownership of registered works.