Anthropic Wins First Round In Lawsuit From Music Publishers Over Song Lyrics
U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee on Tuesday found that Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO didn't prove that the existing licensing market is being undercut by Anthropic pilfering their material without consent or payment. She also pointed to concerns regarding the 'enforceability and manageability' of a court order that would require the company to rebuild future training models due to the 'enormous and seemingly ever-expanding scope' of works that the case concerns. If the injunction was granted, it would've extended to hundreds of thousands of songs owned by the music publishers.
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In a statement, the publishers said they remain 'very confident in our case against Anthropic more broadly.' They added that the company '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.'
At the heart of the lawsuit, filed in Tennessee federal court in 2023, are allegations that Anthropic copied lyrics from artists such as Katy Perry, the Rolling Stones and Beyoncé to build its AI model. When asked the lyrics to Perry's 'Roar,' for example, the company's AI chatbot Claude provided an near-identical copy of the words in the piece.
The publishers sought a sweeping court order that would temporarily block Anthropic from using lyrics owned by the publishers moving forward.
In Tuesday's ruling, the court stressed the 'unknowable universe of songs' that the injunction would apply to.
'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,' Lee wrote.
Anthropic maintained that excluding an undefined amount of material from its training library would be 'virtually impossible' and would require it to 'have to undertake constant efforts to update the corpus, and restart the future model's training process.'
Among the main arguments advanced by publishers is that existing and future licensing opportunities from lyrics aggregators and other AI companies is being undercut by Anthropic using their copyrighted materials without payment.
The court disagreed, finding that the publishers haven't advanced any evidence that Anthropic's use of song lyrics has reduced license fees from lyrics websites, which it underscored does not compete with Claude. It said that much of the potential harm from this conduct was resolved in a deal between the two sides reached earlier this year to maintain existing guardrails that prevent Claude from providing lyrics to songs owned by the publishers or create new song lyrics based on the material.
Lee also concluded that the market for training licenses has grown since the lawsuit was filed contrary to arguments from publishers that the use of their lyrics to train Claude will damage their position in future negotiations with AI companies. Rather than an injunction, she said that publishers can pursue monetary damages if they ultimately prevail in the lawsuit.
In the ruling, the court didn't decide the issue of fair use — a critical question in AI cases that asks whether the use of copyrighted material without a license is permitted, though its analysis of the licensing market may hint broadly at how other judges consider the issue.
'We are pleased that the court did not grant the plaintiffs' disruptive and amorphous request for interim relief in this case,' Anthropic said in a statement. '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.'
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