# Elvis Rights Holders Sue Anthropic Over 274 Songs

> Rights holders for 274 Elvis Presley songs sued Anthropic on Oct 23, alleging Claude trained on the lyrics. The three claims and the $41.1M ask.

- Author: Nitish Garg, Founder & CEO, CellCog
- Published: 2026-10-25
- Canonical (HTML): https://cellcog.ai/blog/elvis-rights-holders-sue-anthropic/
- Section: Guides / Trust, permissions & security
- Publisher: CellCog (https://cellcog.ai), the AI employee platform. Blog index for agents: https://cellcog.ai/blog/llms.txt

## Key points

- Rights holders for 274 songs recorded by Elvis Presley sued Anthropic on October 23, 2026, in the Northern District of California, case 5:26-cv-12473.
- The main claim asks for up to $41.1 million: 274 works at the $150,000 statutory maximum for willful infringement.
- The complaint alleges Anthropic stripped songwriter and publisher information from the lyrics in its data-cleaning pipeline.
- It joins earlier suits against Anthropic: Concord's lyrics case from 2024 and Reservoir Media's suit filed October 21, 2026.
- Anthropic had not commented as of Saturday, October 24, Billboard reported, and no court has ruled.

## At a glance

- **Who sued Anthropic?** ABG EPE IP LLC and other publishers, trusts and individuals who own or control 274 compositions recorded by Elvis Presley.
- **What do they claim?** Copyright infringement, removal of copyright management information and circumvention, over lyrics they say Claude was trained on without a license.
- **How much do they ask for?** Up to $41.1 million on the main claim; the three claims name $48,635,000 together.

**Rights holders for 274 songs recorded by Elvis Presley sued Anthropic on October 23, 2026, alleging that Claude was trained on the songs' lyrics without a license.** The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California as case 5:26-cv-12473, brings three claims and asks for up to $41.1 million in statutory damages on the main one. Anthropic had not commented by Saturday, Billboard reported.

These are allegations. No court has ruled, and Anthropic has not yet answered the complaint.

## What the complaint says

![Animation: a lyric sheet with an amber CMI tag moves from Licensed lyric sites to Common Crawl to Data cleaning, where the tag drops off below the box, and the bare sheet moves into Claude training](https://cellcog.ai/blog/media/elvis-rights-holders-sue-anthropic/pipeline.svg)
*The complaint's account: licensed lyrics, Common Crawl, credits stripped, then Claude*

The plaintiffs are ABG EPE IP LLC and a group of music publishers, trusts and individuals who own or control the 274 compositions listed in the complaint's Exhibit A. Among the songs it names are "Can't Help Falling in Love", "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up" and "Return To Sender".

Their account of how the lyrics reached Claude runs in three steps:

- The plaintiffs license their lyrics to sites such as Musixmatch and LyricFind, which must show them with the songwriter, the publisher and other copyright management information (CMI).
- They allege the Common Crawl web archive scraped those licensed pages, and that Anthropic copied the lyrics into a permanent internal library used for training.
- They allege Anthropic "intentionally removed or altered CMI" from the works in its data-cleaning pipeline, before the text went into successive Claude models.

The complaint also leans on earlier cases. Citing Bartz v. Anthropic, it says Anthropic downloaded millions of books, some containing the lyrics, from the pirate library Library Genesis over BitTorrent. And it says Claude's lyric filters "cover only a narrow subset of commercially prominent songs and are readily circumvented by rephrasing the prompt."

## What the plaintiffs ask for

*Table: The three claims in ABG EPE IP LLC v. Anthropic PBC, case 5:26-cv-12473, filed October 23, 2026*

| Claim | Law | Statutory damages | Amount the complaint names |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct copyright infringement | 17 U.S.C. 504(c) | Up to $150,000 per work, if willful | $41,100,000 |
| Removing or altering CMI | 17 U.S.C. 1202 | Up to $25,000 per violation | $6,850,000 |
| Circumventing protection measures | 17 U.S.C. 1201 | Up to $2,500 per violation | $685,000 |

At the amounts named, the three claims add up to $48,635,000. The $41.1 million is 274 works at the $150,000 statutory maximum for willful infringement; the complaint also asks, in the alternative, for actual damages and Anthropic's profits. It seeks a permanent injunction against further infringement of the 274 works, an order covering the copies Anthropic holds, and a jury trial.

## The other music suits against Anthropic

*Table: Music and book cases against Anthropic that this complaint cites or sits beside*

| Case | Filed | Court | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concord Music Group v. Anthropic, 5:24-cv-03811 | 2024 | N.D. Cal. | Music publishers' lyrics case; cited in the Elvis complaint |
| Bartz v. Anthropic, 4:24-cv-05417 | 2024 | N.D. Cal. | Authors' books case; the complaint cites its record on Library Genesis |
| Reservoir Media v. Anthropic | Oct 21, 2026 | N.D. Cal. | Reported by Billboard, filed beside Reservoir's suit against Suno |
| ABG EPE IP v. Anthropic, 5:26-cv-12473 | Oct 23, 2026 | N.D. Cal. | 274 compositions recorded by Elvis Presley |

Reservoir's complaint against Suno, filed the same day as its Anthropic suit, lists 1,050 works and $157.5 million in statutory damages on its main claim, the same three-claim structure the Elvis plaintiffs used two days later.

## What it means for teams using Claude

A suit over training data is about how a model was built. It does not switch Claude off, and the relief asked for here is money, the 274 works and the copies. The part that touches users today is output: the complaint argues lyric filters can be talked around, so a team publishing AI-written text should still check it for reproduced lyrics before it goes out.

## Where CellCog stands

Every CellCog agent tier runs on Claude Opus 5.5 through Anthropic's API. CellCog is not a party to this case, and nothing in the complaint changes what the model does for our users today.

## What we are watching

- Anthropic's response to the complaint.
- Whether the court relates this case to Concord or to Reservoir's Anthropic suit.
- The docket entry naming the assigned judge.

## Sources

- Complaint, [ABG EPE IP LLC et al. v. Anthropic PBC](https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/ABG_EPE_IP_LLC_et_al-v-Anthropic-Oct-23-2026.pdf), N.D. Cal. 5:26-cv-12473, filed October 23, 2026. Read in full.
- Billboard, [Elvis Presley rights holders sue Anthropic](https://www.billboard.com/pro/elvis-presley-estate-sues-suno-anthropic/), October 24, 2026.
- Complaint, [Reservoir Media Management v. Suno](https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/OOMPLAINT-Oct-21-2026-Reservoir_Media_Management_Inc.pdf), N.D. Cal. 3:26-cv-12305, filed October 21, 2026.

## FAQ

**When was the Elvis lawsuit against Anthropic filed?**

October 23, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, case 5:26-cv-12473.

**Which songs are in the Elvis lawsuit?**

274 compositions listed in Exhibit A, including Can't Help Falling in Love, Don't Be Cruel, All Shook Up and Return To Sender.

**What is CMI?**

Copyright management information: the title, songwriter, publisher and similar details shown with a work. The complaint says Anthropic removed it in data cleaning.

**Has Anthropic responded?**

Not as of Saturday, October 24, 2026, Billboard reported. No court has ruled on any of the claims.

**Does CellCog run on Claude?**

Yes. Every CellCog agent tier runs on Claude Opus 5.5 through Anthropic's API. CellCog is not a party to the case.

## Related

- [Eight States Sue OpenAI: ChatGPT Safety and Rogue Agents](https://cellcog.ai/blog/eight-states-sue-openai/index.md)
- [Four AI Labs Sued Over the Slowdown: What the Suit Says](https://cellcog.ai/blog/four-ai-labs-sued-over-slowdown/index.md)
- [Is Claude Opus 5.5 Nerfed? What the Trackers Measured](https://cellcog.ai/blog/is-claude-opus-5-5-nerfed/index.md)

## The AI employee for this read

[AI Legal Assistant](https://cellcog.ai/ai-employees/ai-legal-assistant): I built this page. For what it covers, hire a legal assistant: it tracks the contracts, drafts the first pass and routes what needs a lawyer.

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