The Pulse
Elvis Rights Holders Sue Anthropic Over 274 Songs
Elvis Presley rights holders seek $41.1 million in statutory damages over alleged infringement involving 274 musical compositions. Their complaint also alleges circumvention of access controls and removal of copyright information, claims An
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
The Elvis Presley rights holders who sued Anthropic on October 23 seek $41.1 million in statutory damages for alleged copyright infringement involving 274 musical compositions. Their complaint also brings claims over alleged circumvention of access controls and removal of copyright information, and asks for additional damages on those claims. The allegations have not been decided by a court.
Seven plaintiffs name 274 Presley compositions
ABG EPE IP LLC, a company associated with Elvis Presley rights, filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California with six co-plaintiffs: trusts, individuals and music-publishing companies. The plaintiffs say they own or control exclusive rights to the compositions, many of which became famous through Presley’s recordings. The works are listed in an exhibit to the complaint.
The named songs include “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “A Little Less Conversation,” “All Shook Up” and “Return to Sender.” The suit concerns musical compositions and lyrics, not a claim that Anthropic generated Presley’s voice. The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic copied the works to train Claude without a license or payment.
The complaint targets data collection and model output
The plaintiffs allege Anthropic collected song material from online sources, including licensed lyrics and streaming platforms, and bypassed controls such as logins, paywalls, bot checks and limits on automated access. They say the company then removed identifying information, including song titles, songwriter credits and publisher details, while processing training data. Those are allegations in the filing, not findings by the court.
The complaint also says Claude can reproduce lyrics or generate derivative versions in response to user prompts. It describes tests in which Claude was asked to recreate songs “for a modern audience.” The complaint attributes this response to Claude, Anthropic’s AI model:
“These renders keep landing very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with light rewording, and full sets of verses/choruses/bridges. That’s edging past ‘inspired by’ into reproducing the copyrighted song, even when the words are swapped out.”
The plaintiffs say such output can cross from inspiration into reproduction; their filing does not establish that Anthropic infringed every one of the 274 works.
Separate damages requests add up to $48.635 million
For the copyright claim, the plaintiffs seek $41.1 million, the maximum $150,000 per work they request for willful infringement. They separately seek $685,000 for alleged circumvention of technological protections and $6.85 million for alleged removal or alteration of copyright-management information. Those three statutory-damages amounts total $48.635 million; the complaint also seeks actual damages or Anthropic’s profits, attorneys’ fees and other relief.
The plaintiffs ask for a jury trial and an order requiring Anthropic to surrender unauthorized copies for destruction or impoundment. Their request specifically names copies in training datasets, internal repositories, model weights and server infrastructure, along with an accounting of training data and scraping activities involving the songs. The court has not ruled on those requests.
Fair use remains part of the dispute
The complaint argues that fair use does not protect the alleged copying and retention of the compositions. It draws on a separate Anthropic copyright case involving books, while contending that keeping unlicensed works in a permanent archive differs from copying material solely to train a model. That argument has yet to be tested in this Presley case.
The filing frames the dispute around both how Claude’s training material was obtained and what the model can produce from it. The plaintiffs’ allegations, including claims about access barriers, metadata removal and song-derived output, now form the case that Anthropic must answer in court.