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Enforcement or court caseMediaUSReported

Judge hears Anthropic’s fair-use defence over song lyrics in music publishers’ case

See how this story connects

Source: Reuters via The Economic Times

US District Judge Eumi Lee heard argument in San Jose on 21 October 2026 on whether Anthropic’s use of song lyrics to train Claude is fair use, in the case Universal Music Group, Concord and ABKCO filed in 2023 over hundreds of songs. Anthropic’s counsel Sonal Mehta argued the training is transformative and that the publishers had shown no market harm; the publishers’ counsel Matt Oppenheim said Claude received nearly 120,000 requests to generate lyrics over six months and that such models could flood the market. Lee did not rule and questioned the publishers’ claim that Claude’s lyric writing threatens their market.

Why it matters

A ruling for either side would be the first on fair use for lyrics in a generative AI training case, after Judge Alsup’s 2025 ruling for Anthropic on books and Judge Chhabria’s ruling for Meta.

When
21 Oct 2026
ID
WTA-N-2026-0366
Who
Anthropic, Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO; Eumi Lee
Authority
US District Court, N.D. California
Target
Anthropic
Action
fair-use hearing; no ruling
Status
pending ruling · Enforcement ledger

Summary by wheresthe.ai, from Reuters via The Economic Times. We could not open the primary document, so it is marked Reported. Checked against the source on 22 Oct 2026.

Read the original at Reuters via The Economic Times

Source copy: download the page as saved on 22 Oct 2026 (PDF). Also held by the Internet Archive.

Next stop on this Storyline: What happened nextMeta delays its new business terms to 20 November after publishers object to AI scraping

Cite this story

WTA-N-2026-0366: “Judge hears Anthropic’s fair-use defence over song lyrics in music publishers’ case.” wheresthe.ai, 21 Oct 2026. https://wheresthe.ai/d/us-concord-v-anthropic-fair-use-hearing-2026-10/ (source: Reuters via The Economic Times).

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