Apr 01, 2025 09:00:00

AI company Anthropic sued for 'infringing the copyright of lyrics,' but the injunction was dismissed because 'it has not suffered irreparable harm'

The rapid advances in AI technology in recent years require large-scale language models trained on extensive data sets, but since training is often done without the permission of the rights holders by

web scraping , rights issues are often raised. In June 2024, Anthropic , an American AI company famous for Claude Plays Pokemon, which lets AI play Pokemon, was sued by a music industry group for 'systematically and extensively infringing copyrighted lyrics,' and the results of the trial were made public in March 2025.

Anthropic Scores Preliminary Victory in AI-Copyright Clash Against Music Companies (Updated) * TorrentFreak
https://torrentfreak.com/anthropic-scores-preliminary-victory-in-ai-copyright-clash-against-music-companies-250326/

Music companies including Concord Records , an American jazz record company, and Universal Music Group, a multinational music company headquartered in the United States, jointly filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in the District Court of California and North Dakota on June 26, 2024. The lawsuit includes examples of lyrics generated by Anthropic's chat AI, Claude, and seeks damages of up to millions of dollars (hundreds of millions of yen).

In response to the lawsuit, Anthropic acknowledged the possibility of using lyrics to train AI, but argued that 'lyrics for currently published music and future music are available on the Internet, making it difficult to completely restrict their use as training data, and Anthropic uses them to the extent permitted under fair use.' In the past, OpenAI, an AI company known for ChatGPT, has made a similar argument, saying, 'If using copyrighted works to train AI does not constitute fair use, the AI race is over.'

OpenAI says 'AI race ends if training on copyrighted work is not fair use' - GIGAZINE

Anthropic also claims that one of the issues raised in the lawsuit, the chatbot's perfect reproduction of song lyrics, was unintentional and purely accidental. 'Anthropic has always put in place 'guardrails' to prevent such consequences, such as direct copyright infringement. If such measures have failed in the past, it would have been a 'bug', not a 'feature', of our products,' Anthropic said.

After considering the arguments of both sides, Judge Eumi K. Lee of the District Court of California denied the music companies' request for a 'preliminary injunction against Anthropic's AI' on March 28, 2025. In his decision, Judge Lee pointed out that 'a preliminary injunction is a special relief that must, among other things, show that the plaintiff has suffered irreparable harm.' In this case, the 'output' of the chatbot disclosing the lyrics in their entirety was resolved by agreement between the two parties, and the 'input' that questioned the training was not considered to be 'irreparable harm,' so the plaintiff's claim was dismissed.

Similarly, music companies argued that 'Anthropic's use of copyrighted lyrics could adversely affect future AI licensing markets that may sell or provide lyrics under official licenses to AI companies,' but Judge Lee did not find this persuasive, saying it 'provided no details or specifics.' Even if music companies suffer damages, the damages are not necessarily 'irreparable,' and the damages could be addressed in the future with damages. Therefore, the court has determined that special measures such as a preliminary injunction are not necessary at this stage.

Another issue the court noted was the scope of the requested injunction. The lyrics covered by the injunction were not specifically defined, and could include 'all lyrics for future music releases.' Anthropic argued that it would be 'virtually impossible' to prevent the use of an ill-defined lyrics library, but Judge Lee agreed with Anthropic, saying, 'The scope of copyrighted material covered by the requested injunction is vast and appears to be continuing to expand, raising significant concerns about its enforceability and manageability.'

Anthropic sought to dismiss its claims of 'contributory infringement' (that the defendants aided third parties in infringing the copyrights of others), 'indirect infringement' (that the defendants profited from third parties' copyright infringement), and 'removal of copyright management information' (that the defendants removed or altered copyright information), all of which the court granted. In particular, the contributory infringement claim was found to lack important elements, and was found to be defective because the music companies failed to provide evidence of direct copyright infringement. The music companies have 30 days from the court order to amend their complaint to address the defects in the lawsuit.