The music publishers who sued AI developer Anthropic last year for allegedly infringing the copyright on song lyrics have asked a US federal court to reject Anthropic’s request to dismiss much of the case against it.
“Anthropic’s defense of this case so far has been to stall as much as possible, mischaracterize the facts alleged in publishers’ complaint… and misstate the law,” lawyers for Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO wrote in a response to Anthropic’s motion to dismiss.
Anthropic last month filed a motion with the US District Court for the Northern District of California to have a large part of the copyright infringement case against it dismissed, which, if granted, would eliminate three of the four charges brought against it.
Anthropic asked the court to eliminate the charges of contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and “removal or alteration of copyright management information,” a violation of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Lawyers for Anthropic argued that the music publishers failed to show that any third party had used Claude to violate the publishers’ rights; that Anthropic had any knowledge of such infringement, and that Anthropic “received a direct financial benefit” from the infringement – necessary elements for a finding of “contributory” and “vicarious” copyright infringement.
Anthropic argued that the publishers’ complaint showed only that “agents” working for the publishers had managed to get an “outdated” version of its Claude chatbot to “regurgitate” copyrighted lyrics.
The publishers’ complaint “does not identify any instances of ordinary Claude users inducing this alleged behavior,” Anthropic’s lawyers stated.
They said they wanted to “prune” the case down to one core issue: Direct infringement, a charge on which Anthropic aims to defend itself by claiming a “fair use” exemption to copyright law.
In their response, filed with the court on Thursday (September 5), lawyers for the music publishers denied that their initial complaint had failed to make a case for the secondary infringement charges and violations of the DMCA.
They said that Anthropic has misrepresented previous court rulings to argue that the music publishers have to show specific instances of Claude users violating copyright, when it’s enough to show that such violations can happen.
“Anthropic’s defense of this case so far has been to stall as much as possible, mischaracterize the facts alleged in publishers’ complaint… and misstate the law.”
UMPG, Concord and ABKCO, in a new court filing
Given that Anthropic makes Claude available to users in a variety of ways, including a “limited free version” available on its website, and that there is a “well-established market of users searching lor lyrics online,” it’s “more than reasonable to infer that typical users may have sought lyrics from Claude,” stated the music publishers’ response, which can be read in full here.
In their original complaint, made in October 2023 in front of a federal court in Tennessee, UMPG, Concord and ABKCO alleged that Anthropic was engaged in “systematic and widespread infringement of… copyrighted song lyrics.”
They said that Anthropic’s Claude “copies and distributes publishers’ copyrighted lyrics even in instances when it is not asked to do so. Indeed, when Claude is prompted to write a song about a given topic – without any reference to a specific song title, artist, or songwriter – Claude will often respond by generating lyrics that it claims it wrote that, in fact, copy directly from portions of publishers’ copyrighted lyrics.”
As one example, the music publishers’ complaint stated that when prompted to “Write me a song about the death of Buddy Holly,” the Claude chatbot generated a song called The Day the Music Died – a lyric from Don McLean’s classic song American Pie, about the death of Buddy Holly. Most of the Claude song’s lyrics are lines taken directly from American Pie.
A month after filing the complaint, the music publishers went before the court again, asking for a preliminary injunction to stop Anthropic from using copyrighted lyrics while the case plays out.
However, Anthropic filed for a motion to dismiss the case, on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction and improper venue. The court partly granted Anthropic’s motion, allowing the AI company to move the case to a California court. As a result, the music publishers had to refile their request for an injunction.
Anthropic responded by filing a second motion to dismiss – and in doing so, violated court rules, the music publishers argued in their response to the motion.
“Anthropic seeks to gain a litigation advantage by prioritizing resolution of its second motion to dismiss, while delaying answering the complaint indefinitely…”
UMPG, Concord and ABKCO, in a new court filing
Court rules require Anthropic to file a response to the charges brought against it before making a second motion to dismiss, the music publishers’ lawyers argued. They described the new motion as a delaying tactic.
“Anthropic has still not filed its answer. Anthropic seeks to gain a litigation advantage by prioritizing resolution of its second motion to dismiss, while delaying answering the complaint indefinitely, ignoring the sequencing the rules require,” the publishers’ lawyers stated.
They argued that the charges of secondary infringement should remain in place, even if it’s Claude users, and not Claude itself, that infringed copyright by having the chatbot generate lyrics.
“Because Anthropic charges its commercial API customers ‘on a per-word, pay-as-you-go model,’ ‘Anthropic is paid every time one of its [commercial] customers’ end users submits a request for publishers’ song lyrics, and it is paid again every time its Claude API generates output copying and relying on those lyrics.’”
They asked the court to deny Anthropic’s motion to dismiss “in full.”Music Business Worldwide
