The music publisher that sued artificial intelligence developer Anthropic last year for alleged copyright infringement of lyrics has asked a U.S. federal court to reject Anthropic’s request to dismiss most of the lawsuit.
“Anthropic’s defense of this case thus far has been to delay it as long as possible, misrepresent the facts alleged in the publisher’s complaint … and misrepresent the law,” Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO wrote in response to Anthropic’s motion to dismiss.
Anthropic filed a motion last month in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to dismiss most of the copyright infringement cases against it, which if granted would expunge three of the four charges against it.
Anthropic asked the court to eliminate claims of contributory infringement, substituted infringement and “deletion or alteration of copyright management information” that violate U.S. patent law Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Anthropic’s lawyers argued that the music publisher failed to prove that any third party used Crowder to infringe the publisher’s rights; that Anthropic had knowledge of such infringement and that Anthropic “received a direct financial benefit” from the infringement – which It is a necessary element to identify “joint” and “substitute” copyright infringement.
Anthropic argued that the publisher’s complaint merely showed that “agents” working for the publisher managed to obtain an “outdated” version of the Crowder chatbot to “regurgitate” copyrighted lyrics.
Lawyers for Anthropic said the publisher’s complaint “did not identify any instances of ordinary Claude users engaging in this alleged conduct.”
They said they wanted to “reduce” the case to a core issue: direct infringement, which Anthropic aimed to defend itself by claiming a “fair use” exemption from copyright law.
In a response filed with the court on Thursday (September 5), lawyers for the music publishers denied that their initial complaint failed to substantiate secondary infringement claims and DMCA violations.
They said Anthropic misrepresented a previous court ruling, holding that music publishers must show specific instances of copyright infringement by Claude users, which is sufficient to show that such infringement may occur.
“Anthropic’s defense of this case thus far has been to delay as much as possible, misrepresent the facts alleged in the publisher’s complaint … and misrepresent the law.”
UMPG, Concord and ABKCO in a new court filing
“This makes perfect sense,” given that Anthropic makes Claude available to users in multiple ways, including offering a “limited free version” on its website, and that there is a “market of users searching for lor lyrics online,” the music publisher’s response said. “We reasoned that the typical user might be looking for lyrics from Crowder,” the response can be read in full here .
In the original complaint filed in Tennessee federal court in October 2023, UMPG, Concord and ABKCO alleged that Anthropic engaged in “systemic and widespread infringement of… copyrighted lyrics.”
They said Anthropic’s Crowder “copied and distributed the publisher’s copyrighted lyrics, even without request.” In fact, when Crowder was prompted to write a song about a given topic — without mentioning any specific song title, artist, or songwriter — Crowder would typically respond by generating lyrics that he claimed to have written when, in fact, they were copied directly from parts of the publisher’s copyrighted lyrics .
In one example, the music publisher’s complaint alleges that when prompted to “write me a song about the death of Buddy Holly,” the Crowder chatbot generated a song titled the day music died – Lyrics from Don McLean‘s classic songs American Pieabout the death of Buddy Holly. Most of the lyrics to Claude’s songs were taken directly from American Pie.
A month after the lawsuit was filed, the music publisher filed another lawsuit in court, asking for a preliminary injunction to prevent Anthropic from using the copyrighted lyrics while the case is pending.
However, Anthropic filed a motion to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction and improper venue. The court partially granted Anthropic’s motion, allowing the artificial intelligence company to move the case to a California court. As a result, the music publisher had to resubmit its request for an injunction.
The music publisher argued in its response to the motion that Anthropic violated court rules by filing a second motion to dismiss.
“Anthropic seeks to gain litigation advantage by preemptively resolving the second motion to dismiss while indefinitely delaying its response to the complaint…”
UMPG, Concord and ABKCO in a new court filing
Lawyers for the music publisher argued that court rules required Anthropic to respond to the allegations against it before filing a second motion to dismiss. They described the new motion as a delaying tactic.
“Anthropic has not yet filed a response. Anthropic is seeking to gain litigation advantage by prioritizing resolution of the second motion to dismiss while indefinitely delaying its response to the complaint, disregarding the order required by the rules,” attorneys for the publisher said.
They argued that the secondary infringement claim should remain in place, even if it was a Cloud user, rather than Cloud itself, who infringed the copyright by having the chatbot generate the lyrics.
“Because Anthropic charges its commercial API customers on a “per-word, pay-as-you-go model,” Anthropic pays every time it uses the API. [commercial] Customer’s end users submit requests for Publisher lyrics and are billed again each time their Claude API generates output that replicates and relies on those lyrics.
They asked the court to deny Anthropic’s motion to dismiss “in its entirety.”global music business
