AI copyright news, graded by source

Judge Lee dismisses the music publishers' contributory, vicarious and DMCA claims against Anthropic with leave to amend, leaving the direct-infringement claim over lyrics untouched

On March 26, 2025 Judge Lee granted Anthropic's motion to dismiss Counts II through IV of the publishers' complaint; Anthropic had not challenged the direct-infringement count. The court found the contributory claim failed because the complaint alleged only what unidentified users 'can' do when prompting Claude for lyrics, never a specific act of third-party infringement, and did not say whether the quoted lyric outputs were prompted by the publishers' own investigators; it declined to decide whether investigator-prompted output could count. It also found no allegation that Anthropic had actual knowledge of specific infringements, holding that including lyrics in training data does not by itself establish such knowledge. The vicarious claim fell for lack of a predicate act, although the court found the publishers plausibly alleged a direct financial benefit, since Anthropic is paid per input and output and the lyrics allegedly serve as a draw. The DMCA 1202(b) claim was dismissed because allegations that Claude's output often omits copyright management information do not show intentional removal. The publishers later amended to assert 499 works, now at summary judgment.