THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • Judge Eumi K. Lee dismissed the direct copyright infringement count against Dario Amodei, but the publishers may file amended allegations.
  • The publishers' contributory infringement claim against him was not challenged and stays in the case.
  • The court deferred Anthropic's bid to drop the claims over Claude's outputs and the removal of copyright management information; a joint status report is due November 11.

A federal judge in San Jose has thrown out, at least for now, the claim that Anthropic's chief executive Dario Amodei personally infringed music publishers' copyrights. Following a hearing on November 4, US District Judge Eumi K. Lee of the Northern District of California dismissed the direct infringement count against him but gave the publishers leave to amend, according to Unite.AI and MLex.

The claim against Amodei

The case, known as Concord II, was filed in January 2026 by Concord Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group and ABKCO. It seeks more than $3 billion in damages and, in its second amended complaint, lists more than 20,000 compositions. The publishers allege that Anthropic obtained lyrics by torrenting them from pirate libraries, an accusation that surfaced after book authors made similar claims against the company. Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann are named as individual defendants.

In an August motion, Amodei's lawyers argued that the count titled "Direct Copyright Infringement by Torrenting" described downloads by Mann and other employees and contained no facts showing that Amodei copied any work himself. In their view, allegations that he approved or encouraged the conduct point to contributory liability. His motion did not contest the separate contributory infringement claim, which therefore remains, and he had asked for dismissal with prejudice, which the court did not grant.

What is still pending

Anthropic filed its own partial motion the same day, seeking to dismiss the claim that Claude reproduces the publishers' lyrics in its outputs and the claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act over removal of copyright management information. MLex reports that Lee voiced doubts about whether the publishers had offered enough support for the output allegations, but she deferred a ruling on both issues. The parties must discuss whether to settle the question through more briefing or an amended complaint and file a joint status report by November 11.

Anthropic did not ask the court to dismiss the torrenting-based claim against the company or the allegations about copying lyrics to train Claude, though it disputes them. The publishers also pursue an earlier case, filed in October 2023 and covering 499 works. The written reasoning behind the dismissal of the Amodei claim had not been reported in detail at the time of writing.