Elvis Presley Estate Sues Anthropic Over 274 Songs in Major Copyright Case

A subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group, which controls much of Elvis Presley's intellectual property, filed a federal lawsuit Friday alongside other companies, trusts and individuals who own rights to his music. The suit accuses AI developer Anthropic of training its Claude models on 274 Presley songs without permission or payment [6][7][9]. The complaint was first reported by Billboard, according to the Guardian and Rolling Stone [1][2].

The plaintiffs seek statutory damages of up to $150,000 per track. Most reports calculate this at roughly $41 million [1][2][8][9]; the Los Angeles Times reports the plaintiffs' lawyers are seeking roughly $50 million [7].

The claims

Filed in San Francisco federal court [7], the complaint names Anthropic as defendant and lists Presley compositions including "Can't Help Falling in Love," "All Shook Up," "Don't Be Cruel," "A Little Less Conversation," "Return to Sender" and "(You're The) Devil in Disguise" [2][9]. Lead attorney Richard Busch — who previously represented the Marvin Gaye estate in the "Blurred Lines" case — writes that "the Elvis Plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before" [1][2].

The lawsuit alleges infringement occurred throughout "the entire development" of Anthropic's flagship Claude models and continues today as users generate outputs that reproduce copyrighted lyrics or create unauthorized adaptations [6]. It further claims Anthropic stored Presley's songs "into a permanent, general-purpose central library intended to be retained indefinitely, from which subsets were selected and copied again to train the next generation of Claude models" [7].

Guardrails and a striking admission

A central exhibit in the complaint is a passage the plaintiffs attribute to Claude itself. According to the filing, when recently asked to recreate specific songs "for a modern audience," Claude produced material and then acknowledged: "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" [2][6][8]. The plaintiffs argue this shows Anthropic's post-lawsuit "guardrails" are ineffective and that the company "knowingly engaged and continues to willfully engage in copyright infringement" [1].

Anthropic's response

A spokesperson for Anthropic told NBC News: "We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully" [6]. The company has previously maintained that training AI models on copyrighted material can be protected under U.S. fair use law [9]. That question remains unresolved across dozens of pending lawsuits.

Context: a growing docket

This case arrives amid a wave of litigation against Anthropic over music copyright. In 2023, Universal Music Publishing, Concord and ABKCO sued over alleged lyric reproduction involving songs by Katy Perry, Gloria Gaynor and the Rolling Stones [9]. Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell filed similar suits in 2024, citing works by the Beatles, Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson [9]. Independent publisher Round Hill and Reservoir Media have also sued Anthropic, as well as the AI music generator Suno [6]. Anthropic previously agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with authors over the use of pirated books in training data — the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history [6].

Why this case matters

While major labels and publishers have been the primary plaintiffs to date, the Presley suit is one of the first high-profile actions brought directly by an artist's estate [1][2][5][8]. The complaint frames Presley's catalog as "some of the most groundbreaking, revolutionary, influential, and enduring musical compositions in human history" [6][7]. A ruling could shape how courts treat estate-led claims and whether the fair-use defense applies to large-language-model training on musical compositions.

What we don't know

The court has not yet ruled on any of the pending Anthropic music cases. The fair-use question — central to all of them — remains untested at trial. Anthropic's full defense has not been filed. The $41 million figure represents a statutory maximum; actual damages, if any, would be determined later. It is not yet clear whether Anthropic has produced training-data logs or whether discovery will reveal the exact provenance of the 274 songs.