In a lawsuit filed by music publishers against Anthropic PBC for its unlicensed exploitation of their copyrighted lyrics in its generative artificial intelligence platform, “Claude,” Pryor Cashman has asked a federal court in San Francisco to accept an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America, the National Music Publishers’ Association, and seven other trade organizations that represent creators and copyright owners.

The brief supports the music publishers’ motion seeking an order enjoining Anthropic from copying lyrics to develop and train new AI models and to maintain guardrails to prevent output that reproduces, distributes, or displays lyrics while the case proceeds. The brief shows that Anthropic’s arguments that licensing is too difficult and so it need not comply with the law are both factually and legally untrue. There are companies that have licensed the content that they use to build their AI models, and Anthropic’s refusal to do so is a competitive strategy that the courts should not condone or encourage:

Recognizing that the law requires them to obtain such permission, many companies in the AI field have obtained licenses to use copyrighted content for AI model training and other purposes. These companies are willing and able to comply with the law as they develop generative AI software.  . . .

AI can reach its full potential and respect the rights of creators at the same time. The arguments that no one in the AI field, including Anthropic, can or should have to license copyrighted works before copying and exploiting them are a pretense belied by industry practice and well-established legal principles.

The brief also points out that Anthropic’s argument that the novelty and benefits of AI technology exempt it from core copyright principles is one that has repeatedly been made by others who have used technology to infringe on a mass scale and has been consistently rejected by the courts:

Technology companies, like all others, must follow the law.  . . .  The false choice that Anthropic and [its supporters] have presented between compliance with copyright law and technological progress is a well-worn, losing policy argument previously made by other mass infringers such as Napster and Grokster in their heyday.

Pryor Cashman Partners Frank Scibilia, Joshua Weigensberg, and Benjamin Akley, and Associate Maya Katalan prepared the amicus brief, which was submitted in Concord Music Group Inc., et al., v. Anthropic PBC.

Read the full amicus brief using the link below.