Universal Music Group and its fellow music rightsholders were dealt a setback in their proceedings against multi-billion-dollar AI platform Anthropic this week.
But don’t get it twisted; the judge in the case suggested that Anthropic could still end up paying huge amounts of damages to the music industry, something the publishers say they are going to pursue “vigorously”.
As reported earlier today (March 26), a federal judge in California shot down a request from UMG and the other music publishers (including Concord and ABCKO) to block the AI company from using song lyrics to train its AI models.
In the order issued on Tuesday (March 25), Judge Eumi K. Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California denied the publishers’ motion for a preliminary injunction that would have prohibited Anthropic “from using copies of lyrics to compositions owned or controlled by Publishers for future training of Anthropic’s AI models”.
Importantly, the court did, however, issue two separate but related discovery orders on March 25 – granting Universal and the other publisher plaintiffs significant investigative tools to potentially improve their legal arguments.
Following the ruling, the group of music publishers involved in the case told MBW in a statement that they “remain very confident” about winning their legal case against Anthropic.
You can read the music publishers’ statement in full below:
“Despite the Court’s narrow ruling, we remain very confident in our case against Anthropic more broadly.
“In response to our preliminary injunction motion, Anthropic had 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. The Court noted this factor as an important part of its preliminary decision.”
“This case remains vital to protecting creators from the wholesale theft of their copyrighted works by Anthropic and other AI companies. We expect that, as we proceed with this case and develop a full discovery record, our claims will be validated.”
Joint statement from music publishers
The publishers added: “The Court explicitly declined to decide the fair use question or the merits of our infringement claims at this early stage of the proceeding.
“Though the Court denied the remainder of our motion, which would have required Anthropic to refrain from training on our lyrics while the case proceeds, it did so on the narrow grounds that our damages for this injury can ultimately be compensated with money damages, which we intend to pursue vigorously.
“This case remains vital to protecting creators from the wholesale theft of their copyrighted works by Anthropic and other AI companies. We expect that, as we proceed with this case and develop a full discovery record, our claims will be validated.”
Within the ruling this week, the court raised concerns about the scope of the requested injunction, which would have covered not just the 500 works identified in the lawsuit but potentially “hundreds of thousands” of songs.
“[Music] publishers are essentially asking the Court to define the contours of a licensing market for AI training where the threshold question of ‘fair use’ remains unsettled,” Judge Lee wrote in the 13-page order, which you can read in full here).
The court noted that, according to the publishers’ own evidence, “the market for AI training licenses has grown over the course of this lawsuit rather than diminished” – seemingly a reference to companies like OpenAI, which has struck monetized content licensing agreements over the past year with IP owners such as News Corp, Financial Times, and Shutterstock.
The judge said this fact suggests that a commercial licensing framework for AI training already exists (and is growing), meaning that — should UMG and others eventually win their suit against Anthropic — the court would be able to calculate monetary damages rather than requiring injunctive relief at this stage.
The judge emphasized that her latest ruling does not resolve whether training generative AI models with copyrighted materials constitutes infringement or ‘fair use’, which remains “an open question” to be addressed in subsequent proceedings.
UMG, Concord, and ABKCO sued Anthropic in 2023, alleging that the company trained its AI chatbot Claude on lyrics from at least 500 songs by artists, including Beyoncé, the Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys, without permission.
As we pointed out in our earlier coverage of this latest development in the case, this week’s ruling only addresses one aspect of the publishers’ legal claims against Anthropic and importantly, does not affect a previous favorable ruling for the publishers.
The case effectively has two separate components:
- First, whether Anthropic can reproduce copyrighted lyrics in Claude’s outputs (what users see when interacting with the AI);
- Second, whether Anthropic can use copyrighted lyrics as training data (i.e. inputs) to build its AI models in the first place.
The publishers previously secured a significant victory on the first issue in January 2025, when Anthropic agreed to implement “guardrails” that prevent Claude from reproducing copyrighted lyrics in its responses (i.e. outputs) to users.
That agreement, which the court approved, remains intact and wasn’t challenged in this new ruling.
At that time, UMG stated: “We are pleased the Court approved these important ‘guardrails’ — measures which Anthropic must take to protect the Publisher-Plaintiffs’ copyrighted content, by preventing infringing outputs of copyrighted song lyrics – effectively acknowledging the merits of our claims against Claude’s infringing outputs.”
Today’s development marks a significant milestone in the ongoing copyright battle between rights holders and artificial intelligence companies.
The Anthropic case is one of several ongoing legal disputes regarding the use of copyrighted works to train AI systems.
The outcome could have far-reaching implications for both the creative industries and the development of artificial intelligence technology.
Amid the lawsuit, Anthropic secured an additional USD $4 billion investment from Amazon in late 2023, bringing Amazon’s total investment in the AI company to $8 billion.Music Business Worldwide