Elvis Presley rights holders sue Anthropic in federal court
The lawsuit at a glance
Seven plaintiffs that hold rights to Elvis Presley's songs filed suit against Anthropic on October 23, 2026, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. They accuse Anthropic of copying the lyrics to 274 songs without a license or payment and using them to train Claude. The plaintiffs have asked for a jury trial.
Billboard first reported the case, and The Guardian covered it on October 25. The lead attorney is Richard S. Busch of Adams & Reese.
"The lawsuit, first reported by Billboard, was filed on Friday." — from the second paragraphView official source →
"Plaintiffs demand a trial by jury on all issues so triable" — from the jury demandView official source →
Seven plaintiffs led by an Authentic Brands Group unit
The lead plaintiff is ABG EPE IP LLC, part of Authentic Brands Group (ABG). It controls Presley's name and likeness and holds a share of the publishing rights in the songs he recorded.
The other six plaintiffs are two music publishers, a member and two trusts of the Aberbach family, and the trust of a co-writer. The Aberbach family's company, Hill and Range, once co-owned Presley's publishing companies with the singer.
- Raleigh Music Publishing
- Abilene Music
- Jason Simeon Aberbach
- The Susan T. Aberbach Revocable Trust
- A trust created under the Anne-Rachel Aberbach Family Trust
- The trust of Luigi Creatore, a co-writer of "Can't Help Falling in Love"
"The lead plaintiff is ABG EPE IP LLC, part of Authentic Brands Group (ABG), which controls Presley’s name and likeness and holds a share of the publishing rights in songs he recorded."／"Jean and his brother Julian founded Hill and Range, which co-owned Presley’s publishing companies with the singer." — from the paragraphs on the plaintiffsView official source →
The lawsuit covers lyrics to 274 songs Presley recorded
The complaint covers the lyrics to 274 songs recorded by Presley. It names seven of them as examples:
- All Shook Up
- Can't Help Falling in Love
- If I Can Dream
- Don't Be Cruel
- A Little Less Conversation
- Return To Sender
- (You're The) Devil In Disguise
The complaint also says Presley sold an estimated one billion records. The plaintiffs claim the lyrics to these songs ended up in Claude's training data.
"These distinguished works include “All Shook Up”; “Can’t Help Falling in Love”; “If I Can Dream”; “Don’t Be Cruel”; “A Little Less Conversation”; “Return To Sender”; and “(You’re The) Devil In Disguise”." — from the description of the worksView official source →
"with Elvis Presley selling over an estimated one billion records worldwide, and generating billions of streams across the globe" — from the paragraph quoting the complaintView official source →
Anthropic says it will defend the case fully
Anthropic rejects the claims. A spokesperson told Music Business Worldwide the company disagrees with them and intends to defend the case fully. Beyond that statement, no response from Anthropic to the individual allegations has been reported.
The plaintiffs put their case bluntly in the complaint's opening. They say Anthropic built its business on copyright infringement at an unprecedented scale.
"The Elvis Plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the Defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before." — from the opening of the complaintView official source →
"We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully." — statement from an Anthropic spokespersonView official source →
The plaintiffs want about $48.6 million and more
The complaint asks for damages that add up to just over $48.6 million across three claims. Of that, $41.1 million is for copyright infringement, and the rest comes from two DMCA claims.
Damages sought in the complaint
| Claim | Maximum per song or violation | Total for 274 songs |
|---|---|---|
| Copyright infringement | $150,000 | $41.1 million |
| Getting around access controls (DMCA section 1201) | $2,500 | $685,000 |
| Removing copyright management information (DMCA section 1202) | $25,000 | $6.85 million |
| Total | — | about $48.6 million |
Beyond money, the plaintiffs want a court order to stop the alleged infringement. They also want Anthropic to hand over its copies of the songs.
Up to $150,000 per song for copyright infringement
For copyright infringement, the plaintiffs seek their actual damages and Anthropic's profits, or statutory damages instead. Statutory damages let a copyright owner ask for an amount set by law without having to prove how much money it lost.
US law allows up to $150,000 per work when the infringement is willful. The plaintiffs apply that maximum to all 274 songs, which comes to $41.1 million.
"The Elvis Plaintiffs identify 274 Works herein, and seek the maximum amount of $41,100,000 in statutory damages for Defendant’s willful infringements." — from the copyright infringement claimView official source →
Two DMCA claims add about $7.5 million
The other two claims fall under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The first says Anthropic got around logins, paywalls and bot-detection systems on lyrics and streaming sites to collect the lyrics. It carries up to $2,500 per violation, or $685,000 in total.
The second says Anthropic removed song titles, songwriter credits and publisher details before training. That information is known as copyright management information. This claim carries up to $25,000 per violation, or $6.85 million in total.
Copies in model weights would be destroyed too
The plaintiffs also ask the court to make Anthropic hand over every unauthorized copy of the songs for impoundment or destruction. The demand covers copies in training datasets, internal repositories and servers, and also in model weights. Model weights are the numbers in which a trained AI model stores what it learned.
Music Business Worldwide points out that the demand, if granted, would reach the Claude models themselves. The request does not say which Claude models it covers.
"An order directing Defendant to deliver for impoundment or destruction all unauthorized copies of the copyrighted Works in its possession, custody, or control—including copies retained in training datasets, internal repositories, model weights, and server infrastructure" — from item (e) of the prayer for reliefView official source →
"Model weights are the learned values that make up a trained AI model, so the demand, if granted, would reach the Claude models themselves." — from the paragraph on the destruction demandView official source →
What the complaint says about Claude's training and outputs
The plaintiffs target both how Claude was trained and what it produces. Everything in this section is an allegation from the complaint, and no court has ruled on any of it.
Lyrics allegedly came from websites and pirated books
The plaintiffs say Anthropic collected text from across the internet with automated scraping tools, and that Presley's lyrics were part of it. The complaint names four sources:
- Lyrics websites
- Common Crawl, a large archive of text copied from the web
- The Pile, a training dataset that includes a section of YouTube subtitles
- Pirated books downloaded through BitTorrent
According to the plaintiffs, Anthropic kept all of this in a permanent central library. They say it drew on that library again and again to train each new generation of Claude models.
"Anthropic assembled these pirated and scraped works—including the Works—into a permanent, general-purpose central library intended to be retained indefinitely, from which subsets were selected and copied again to train the next generation of Claude models." — from the opening of the complaintView official source →
Songwriter credits allegedly stripped before training
The plaintiffs say Anthropic removed song titles, songwriter credits and publisher details from the lyrics before training. According to the complaint, Anthropic tested at least three tools that pull the main text out of web pages. It picked Newspaper because that tool removed the information most thoroughly, and passed over jusText because it left copyright notices and owner names in footnotes.
Without those credits in the training data, Claude's outputs would not show whose work they came from. The plaintiffs argue that this makes infringement harder for rights holders to spot.
"Anthropic tested at least three different extraction programs: Readability, Newspaper, and jusText to process and “clean” the datasets prior to ingestion into the All-Purpose Library." — from the section on copyright management informationView official source →
Guardrails allegedly bypassed by rephrasing prompts
The plaintiffs say Claude outputs copies of song lyrics and new works based on them. Anthropic added output filters after music publishers sued it in October 2023. The plaintiffs claim those filters cover only a narrow set of well-known songs and that rephrasing the prompt gets around them.
The complaint says Claude Haiku 4.5 and Sonnet 5 refuse to reproduce lyrics but will still write derivative works based on them. It opens with Claude's reply to a request to rewrite songs "for a modern audience," in which Claude admits its versions came very close to the originals.
"Following the filing of Concord I in October 2023, Anthropic implemented certain output filters (sometimes called “guardrails”) purportedly intended to prevent Claude from reproducing recognized song lyrics. Upon information and belief, however, these filters cover only a narrow subset of commercially prominent songs and are readily circumvented by rephrasing the prompt."／"Indeed, while Claude Haiku 4.5 and Sonnet 5 will both advise that they are not able to reproduce the actual song lyrics due to copyright restrictions, they have no problem creating derivative works based upon those copyrighted lyrics."／"These renders keep landing very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with light rewording, and full sets of verses/choruses/bridges. That’s edging past ‘inspired by’ into reproducing the copyrighted song, even when the words are swapped out." — from paragraphs 64 and 65 and the Claude response quoted at the opening of the complaintView official source →
No Claude output for the 274 songs appears in the complaint
The Claude response quoted at the top of the complaint is not about a Presley song. According to Music Business Worldwide, the complaint cites Round Hill Music's lawsuit against Anthropic, filed by the same legal team on August 17, as its source.
Music Business Worldwide also notes that the complaint gives no example of Claude reproducing or rewriting any of the 274 songs. Instead, the plaintiffs allege that Claude produced infringing output for all 274, and say the evidence sits in Anthropic's own records of user prompts and responses.
"The complaint cites Round Hill Music’s lawsuit against Anthropic, filed by the same legal team on August 17, as its source."／"The Presley complaint does not set out an example of Claude reproducing or rewriting one of the 274 songs." — from the paragraphs on the quoted Claude responseView official source →
Anthropic has faced music copyright suits since 2023
This is not the first time music rights holders have taken Anthropic to court. The complaint says at least six suits over musical works are pending in the same district.
Music rights holders that have sued Anthropic
| Date | Plaintiffs | Works at issue |
|---|---|---|
| October 2023 | UMPG, Concord and ABKCO | Lyrics to about 500 songs |
| January 2026 | UMPG, Concord and ABKCO (second suit) | More than 20,000 works |
| March 2026 | BMG | 493 compositions |
| August 17, 2026 | Round Hill Music | — |
| August 28, 2026 | Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music | — |
| October 21, 2026 | Reservoir | — |
| October 23, 2026 | ABG EPE IP LLC and six others | 274 songs recorded by Presley |
"with at least six suits relating to musical compositions currently pending in this District." — from the opening of the complaintView official source →
UMPG, Concord and ABKCO sued first in 2023
The first suit came in October 2023 from Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), Concord and ABKCO. It covered the lyrics to about 500 songs, and Anthropic added its output filters after that case was filed. The same three publishers filed a second suit in January 2026 covering more than 20,000 works.
"UMPG, Concord, and ABKCO sued Anthropic in October 2023 over roughly 500 songs, and filed a second suit in January 2026 covering more than 20,000 works." — from the paragraphs on related lawsuitsView official source →
More music publishers sued in 2026
Other publishers followed in 2026. BMG sued over 493 compositions in March, and Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music sued on August 28.
Busch's team also filed suits for Round Hill Music on August 17 and for Reservoir on October 21. The Presley complaint says Anthropic's approach was to "infringe now, and hope for a two-trillion-dollar IPO later," and Music Business Worldwide reports that Reservoir's complaint used the same line.
"BMG sued in March 2026 over 493 compositions, and Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music followed on August 28."／"Reservoir’s complaint against Anthropic used the same “infringe now, and hope for a two-trillion-dollar IPO later” line." — from the paragraphs on related lawsuitsView official source →
Book authors settled with Anthropic for $1.5 billion
Outside music, Anthropic agreed in September 2025 to pay $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit from book authors. In that case, Bartz v. Anthropic, authors accused Anthropic of training on pirated copies of their books.
The Presley complaint relies on a July 2025 ruling in the Bartz case. The plaintiffs say the pirated books Anthropic downloaded included books containing the lyrics to Presley's songs.
"In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to a USD $1.5 billion settlement with book authors who had sued over its use of pirated books."／"Relying on a July 2025 ruling in Bartz, the complaint alleges that Anthropic used BitTorrent to download millions of pirated books from Library Genesis. It says these included “hundreds or more books that contain the Works’ lyrics.”" — from the paragraphs on related lawsuitsView official source →
FAQ
- What claims make up the $48.6 million in damages?
- Three claims. Copyright infringement accounts for $41.1 million, at the maximum $150,000 for each of the 274 songs. Two DMCA claims add $685,000 and $6.85 million, which brings the total to just over $48.6 million.
- What has Anthropic said about the lawsuit?
- An Anthropic spokesperson told Music Business Worldwide that the company disagrees with the claims and intends to defend the case fully. Beyond that statement, no response from Anthropic to the individual allegations has been reported.
- Does the complaint show Claude reproducing an Elvis Presley song?
- No. The Claude response quoted at the start of the complaint comes from Round Hill Music's August 17 lawsuit and is not about a Presley song. The plaintiffs allege that Claude produced infringing output for all 274 songs and say the evidence is in Anthropic's records of user prompts and responses.
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