AI company Anthropic has secured an initial legal victory in a copyright dispute brought by several music publishers, after a US federal judge declined to impose a preliminary injunction that would have restricted the company’s use of copyrighted lyrics for AI training purposes.
US District Judge Eumi Lee ruled that the request made by Universal Music Group (UMG), Concord, and ABKCO was overly broad and that the publishers had not demonstrated that Anthropic’s use of the lyrics caused them “irreparable harm”, Reuters reported.
The music publishers filed the lawsuit in 2023, alleging that Anthropic infringed their copyrights by using lyrics from at least 500 songs to train its AI chatbot, Claude, without permission.
The publishers claimed that this unauthorised use of their lyrics risked undermining their licensing market.
In her decision, Judge Lee stated that the publishers’ argument essentially sought a judicial definition of a licensing market for AI training, while the fundamental issue of whether such use constitutes fair use under US copyright law remains unsettled.
“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,” Lee said.
Anthropic welcomed the ruling with a company spokesperson saying they were pleased that the court did not grant the publishers’ “disruptive and amorphous request”.
In response, the music publishers expressed confidence in their broader case against Anthropic, stating that they “remain very confident in our case against Anthropic more broadly.”
The case is among several ongoing lawsuits accusing AI companies of misusing copyrighted material—including works by authors, news organisations, and visual artists—without permission or payment during AI system training.
Tech companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms maintain that their use of such material qualifies as “fair use,” as it helps create new, transformative content.
Earlier in March 2025, Anthropic secured $3.5bn in a Series E funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners taking its post-money valuation to $61.5bn.
The funding round comes months after it secured a more than $1bn investment from tech giant Google.
“Anthropic secures early win in AI copyright dispute” was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand.
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