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The Courts

Judge Drops Direct Infringement Claim Against Amodei, for Now

A judge dismissed a direct-infringement claim against Anthropic’s Dario Amodei but let music publishers replead it; they put their suit’s potential damages at more than $3 billion.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 4 — A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed music publishers’ claim that Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, is personally liable for direct copyright infringement by torrenting their works, but gave them leave to try again. After a hearing that ran from 10:58 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Pacific time, Judge Eumi K. Lee granted Dr. Amodei’s motion to dismiss “with leave to amend for the reasons stated on the record,” the court’s minute entry says. The publishers had not shown how Dr. Amodei committed direct infringement by approving the use of pirated materials, the judge said from the bench, Courthouse News reported. The minute entry does not set out the reasons; the publishers and Anthropic both ordered the hearing transcript that day.

The ruling is narrow: a separate claim that he contributed to others’ infringement, which his motion did not challenge, still stands. Dr. Amodei’s motion, filed Aug. 3, sought to dismiss only the count the complaint titles “Direct Copyright Infringement by Torrenting.” A footnote says it “does not target the contributory infringement claim asserted against Dr. Amodei.”Two Kinds of InfringementDirect infringement, the motion argues, requires unlawful copying by the defendant himself. Contributory infringement, in the words of a 2014 ruling it quotes, occurs where someone “with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another.”

The complaint, as the motion quotes it, says: “At Dr. Amodei’s direction and with Dr. Amodei’s express approval, Mr. Mann personally engaged in the illegal torrenting …” Benjamin Mann, a co-founder, is also a defendant; Wednesday’s entry does not mention him. Dr. Amodei’s lawyers argued that the allegations against him “without exception, sound only in contributory infringement.” The publishers answered in their opposition that he is “directly liable for Anthropic’s direct copyright infringement when he ‘authorizes,’ ‘directs,’ or ‘participates’ in the infringing torrenting.” At the hearing, their lawyer argued, “Just because Amodei didn’t click download on his own computer doesn’t mean he isn’t directly liable,” Courthouse News reported. The judge was not persuaded: “Every CEO for any small startup would be liable under the analysis here,” she said, by the same account.

Dr. Amodei’s lawyers had asked for dismissal with prejudice, which would have barred a new try, arguing that on its “third try” the complaint still “alleges no facts supporting the notion that Dr. Amodei torrented or otherwise copied Plaintiffs’ works.” The publishers replied that this was the first time a court had tested their allegations against him, and that evidence of his role remained out of their reach.

Nothing in Wednesday’s order narrows the case against Anthropic itself. Its own partial motion, Music Business Worldwide reported, asked the court to dismiss the claim that its Claude chatbot reproduces the publishers’ lyrics in its outputs, and a claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but not the torrenting and training claims, which it is contesting. Judge Lee had tentatively ruled from the bench to deny that motion, then, after hearing Anthropic’s lawyer, Sonal Mehta, was not fully convinced the publishers had stated their claim and asked for more briefing, Courthouse News reported. Her order directs the parties to “meet and confer on the need for additional briefing vs. amending the complaint” and to file a joint status report by Wednesday, Nov. 11.

The publishers, among them Concord, Universal Music Publishing Group and ABKCO, sued in January over more than 20,000 songs, “with potential statutory damages of more than $3 billion,” they said in a statement to Music Business Worldwide.The First SuitThe same publishers first sued Anthropic in October 2023, over 499 works. That case, Concord I, was still pending before Judge Lee in August. Anthropic, meanwhile, is preparing to go public; it amended its registration statement on Monday.

Daily Cortex is written with AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude, and fact-checked with OpenAI’s GPT models.

Sources

  1. U.S. District Court, N.D. Cal. (via CourtListener), “Docket, Concord Music Group, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC, No. 5:26-cv-00880 (Minute Entry, Dkt. 137; transcript orders, Dkts. 138 and 139),” Nov. 4, 2026.
  2. U.S. District Court, N.D. Cal. (via CourtListener), “Docket updates feed, Concord Music Group, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC, No. 5:26-cv-00880,” Nov. 4, 2026.
  3. Dr. Dario Amodei (N.D. Cal. Dkt. 104), via Music Business Worldwide, “Defendant Dr. Dario Amodei’s Notice of Motion and Partial Motion to Dismiss,” Aug. 3, 2026.
  4. Courthouse News Service, “Music publishers suffer setback in copyright case against Anthropic,” Nov. 4, 2026.
  5. Music publishers (N.D. Cal. Dkt. 116), “Plaintiffs’ Opposition to Defendant Dr. Dario Amodei’s Partial Motion to Dismiss,” Aug. 31, 2026.
  6. Music Business Worldwide, “Anthropic seeks partial dismissal in music publishers’ $3B lyrics suit – as CEO moves to drop the direct-infringement claim against him,” Aug. 6, 2026.
  7. Music Business Worldwide, “UMG sues Anthropic for $3bn over ‘brazen’ copyright infringement of 20,000+ songs,” Jan. 28, 2026.
  8. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR), “Anthropic, PBC, Form S-1/A: filing detail (accepted 2026-11-02 09:24:24),” Nov. 2, 2026.