The copyright holders of Elvis Presley's songs have sued Anthropic. According to the complaint, the company used Presley's works without permission and used them to train the Claude chatbot. The lawsuit was filed in a California federal court on October 23, 2026, as reported on October 26 by Reuters and Bloomberg Law.
Who Filed the Suit and Where
Authentic Brands Group is among the plaintiffs. They belong to a group of entities that own the copyrights to Presley's song catalog. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The case is officially titled ABG EPE IP LLC v. Anthropic PBC, case number 5:26-cv-12473.
Richard Busch of Adams & Reese is representing the Presley copyright holders in court. According to Reuters, the plaintiffs went to court on Friday, October 23. The complaint says Anthropic's use of Presley's lyrics and musical works infringes copyright.
The complaint is not about a single performer or a single song. The document concerns about 274 protected works. The plaintiffs argue that the lyrics and compositions of these works were used by the company without permission.
The filing date and the date the news broke are different. The document was filed with the court on October 23, while Reuters and Bloomberg Law reported it on October 26. In the meantime, the company also stated its position. The case number and the name of the court are stated precisely in public sources, which makes the case easy to follow.
The Allegations and the Damages Sought
According to Bloomberg Law, the complaint makes three main allegations. The first is copyright infringement. The second is circumvention of digital access controls. The third is removal of copyright management information from protected works.
On the amount of damages, the sources cite two figures. According to Reuters, the plaintiffs sought $41.1 million as statutory damages. According to Bloomberg Law, the plaintiffs are seeking up to $48.6 million under the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Both figures are cited from court documents; the final amount will be set by the court.
The complaint contains one more allegation. It says that although Anthropic added filters after earlier lawsuits, the Claude model still generates unlicensed rewritten versions of the songs. This allegation was included to strengthen the plaintiffs' position, while the company said it disagrees with the claims.
It is also worth noting that the two figures cited by the sources do not contradict each other. Reuters cites the amount of statutory damages sought by the plaintiffs, while Bloomberg Law points to the maximum that could be claimed under the two statutes. In both cases, this is a claim to be clarified during the proceedings, and the final decision rests with the court.
Anthropic's Response
Anthropic responded to the claims on Monday, October 26. A company spokesperson told Reuters:
"We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully."
In other words, the company said it disagrees with the claims and intends to fully defend its position in the case. According to Reuters, court documents do not yet name a representative for Anthropic.
The company did not give a detailed response to the suit. No additional comment was given on the allegations about filters and rewriting either. The case is at an early stage, so the parties' detailed arguments in court have not yet been published in public sources.
The spokesperson's statement was brief. It expressed the company's position in general terms, not as a detailed rebuttal. The company said it intends to defend the case fully, but gave no detailed response to the individual allegations in the complaint. Reuters also noted that no company representative is named in the court documents at this stage.
Earlier Lawsuits and the Broader Dispute
This case is not an isolated one. According to Reuters, the suit is part of a wave of major lawsuits brought by copyright holders against Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta Platforms. All of these cases concern the use of protected works in training artificial intelligence models.
Anthropic has faced similar cases before. Last year, the company reached a settlement with a group of authors. The settlement was worth $1.5 billion, noted as a record. A judge gave it final approval in July 2026.
In addition, a group of music publishers including Universal Music Group filed a separate suit against Anthropic. That case also alleged the use of lyrics by performers such as Beyonce, Rolling Stones and Beach Boys to train Claude. The Presley case emerged as a new link in this chain and shows that the legal dispute between AI companies and copyright holders continues.
Compared with earlier cases, the Presley case continues the line of music-related claims. The case involving Universal Music Group was also about using lyrics to train Claude. The $1.5 billion settlement with authors shows the scale such disputes can reach. The amount sought in the Presley case is much smaller than that settlement, but the number of works cited in the complaint — about 274 — defines the scale of the case.
