Anthropic faces a $41 million federal lawsuit filed by ABG EPE IP LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on October 23, 2026. The complaint accuses the artificial intelligence company of copyright infringement and Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations by ingesting 274 Elvis Presley song lyrics to train its Claude model.
Lawsuit Seeks $41.1 Million in Statutory Damages
- ABG EPE IP LLC seeks up to $41.1 million in statutory damages, demanding $150,000 for each of the 274 Elvis Presley songs cited in the federal complaint.
- The lawsuit alleges Anthropic bypassed technological measures on streaming and lyric platforms and removed copyright management information during data collection.
- The legal challenge lands directly on the eve of Anthropic’s formal announcement for its highly anticipated initial public offering.
The Catalog at the Center of the Dispute
The federal complaint lists 274 songs from the catalog, featuring classics such as “All Shook Up,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” and “A Little Less Conversation,” while the filing excludes several other standards such as “Jailhouse Rock,” “Hound Dog,” and “Blue Suede Shoes,” and Richard Steven Busch of Adams & Reese, Nashville LLP represents the plaintiff entities in the action docketed as Case No. 5:26-cv-12473.
Training Data and Model Reproductions
The lawsuit details how Anthropic allegedly ingested lyrics by sweeping up text from lyrics-aggregation sites, streaming-platform metadata, and large-scale web-crawl archives including Common Crawl and The Pile. According to the complaint, training Claude on these materials gave the model the capacity to reproduce the lyrics in full or in substantial part when prompted by users. The filing asserts that Claude generates these lyrics when end users request specific song titles, ask for tracks written “in the style of” Elvis standards, or prompt the system for ostensibly original compositions that draw upon internal patterns.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Violations
Beyond traditional copyright infringement claims, the litigation targets alleged violations of the DMCA. The complaint contends that Anthropic downloaded protected lyrics from licensed streaming and lyric platforms after bypassing technological barriers designed to control access. The action alleges the company stripped out copyright management information while compiling the training database, an action the plaintiffs claim was intended to hide subsequent infringing outputs.
Damages Sought Ahead of the IPO
The legal action demands actual damages alongside a disgorgement of profits. Alternatively, the plaintiffs request statutory damages reaching up to $150,000 for each of the 274 named compositions, totaling $41.1 million if awarded in full by the court. This financial demand arrives precisely as the AI firm prepares to formally announce its long-awaited initial public offering.
