Anthropic Accused by Music Publishers of Scanning and Destroying Copyrighted Songbooks

Anthropic bought songbooks, scanned them, and destroyed them, music publishers allege – now they want to know which songs were in them.

September 16, 2026 By Murray Stassen

A federal judge found last year that Anthropic had bought print books, torn off their bindings, scanned every page, stored the results as digital files, and thrown away what was left.

Continue to article...

The music publishers suing Anthropic say those books included songbooks and sheet music collections containing their copyrighted works.

They now want a court to open discovery into that program, which Anthropic internally named Project Panama .

Anthropic says that discovery can wait.

Both sides set out their positions in statements filed on Friday (September 11) in the US District Court for the Northern District of California . You can read the publishers’ filing here and Anthropic ‘s filing here .

Judge Eumi K. Lee had given each side three pages to argue the point, following a status conference on September 2 .

There are two Concord cases against Anthropic , and the scanning claim is pleaded in the second.

Concord I , brought in October 2023 by Concord Music Group , Universal Music Publishing Group , and ABKCO , covers 499 works and is now before the court on cross motions for summary judgment .

It alleges that Anthropic scraped lyrics from the internet to train Claude , and that Claude reproduces those lyrics in its outputs.

The same publishers filed Concord II in January 2026 , covering more than 20,000 songs and seeking over USD $3 billion .

That second case covers outputs as well, but its new ground is how Anthropic obtained the works in the first place: torrenting from pirate libraries, and buying and scanning print books.

The publishers first tried to add the torrenting claims to Concord I , but Judge Lee refused in October 2025. Their filing says the court denied the motion on the basis that the case was limited to the theory that Anthropic’s training “data was derived from scraping.”

BMG Rights Management brought a third case in March 2026, and the court has ordered it to run on the same schedule as Concord II .

Judge Lee has split discovery in Concord II into two phases.

Phase one covers the claim that Anthropic torrented pirated books from shadow libraries.

Phase two covers the claim that the company used the publishers’ works to train Claude and to generate its outputs, and is on hold until the court rules on summary judgment in Concord I .

The publishers want discovery into the scanning claim in phase one. Anthropic wants it in phase two.

In their complaint , the Concord II publishers allege that Anthropic “commenced an unauthorized scanning and digitization program” that copied “hundreds or more songbooks and sheet music collections” containing their works.

They say Anthropic did so by “purchasing physical books, reproducing them as digital files without authorization, and adding those copies to its central library,” all “to acquire ‘all the books in the world’ while avoiding as much ‘legal/practice/business slog’ as possible.”

The scanning surfaced publicly in Bartz v. Anthropic , the book authors’ case against Anthropic in the same district.

In their statement, the publishers quote Judge William Alsup ‘s June 2025 ruling in that case, which found that Anthropic had “purchased copyrighted books (some overlapping with those acquired from the pirate sites [LibGen and PiLiMi]), tore off the bindings, scanned every page, and stored them in digitized, searchable files … to amass a central library of ‘all the books in the world’ to retain ‘forever.'”

Judge Alsup ruled in that case that training AI on copyrighted books was fair use, and that buying print books, scanning them and discarding the originals was fair use too – but that keeping pirated copies in a permanent library was not. Anthropic later settled it for $1.5 billion .

The publishers argue that the scanning allegations belong alongside their torrenting claim against Anthropic , because both, in their words, “involve copying books containing Plaintiffs’ works, rather than scraping Plaintiffs’ lyrics from the internet.”

They cite the Second Circuit’s 2024 ruling against the Internet Archive in Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive , which held that the Archive’s scanning and lending of copyrighted books without permission was not fair use.

Their filing states that Anthropic “kept these torrented and scanned books (and potentially other misappropriated works) as part of a general-purpose library for its own uses.”

They add that coordinating discovery into Anthropic ‘s scanning and torrenting “will create efficiencies for the Parties and the Court, while postponing discovery into destructive scanning pending the Concord I summary judgment ruling would serve no purpose but delay.”

They add that the Concord I motions before Judge Lee “address neither torrenting nor destructive scanning.”

Anthropic ‘s filing states: “Because those allegations relate entirely to Publishers’ training claim (Count II), they should be addressed in Phase Two.”

It argues that the court’s fair use ruling in Concord I “will provide important guidance on the book scanning allegations.”

Anthropic says the publishers conceded at a conference before filing that the scanning allegations relate only to their training claim, and that folding scanning into the first phase “would thus expand discovery into issues that are unrelated to the torrenting claims and undermine the efficiencies of the phased discovery ordered by the Court.”

The company also points to the volume of works at stake, saying the torrenting claim covers 714 works while the training claim covers a further 20,517 .

Anthropic further argues that the publishers already took discovery on Project Panama in Concord I , where the company produced “an extensive index of scanned books.”

Its filing states that Thomas Turvey , the company’s data acquisition lead, “testified extensively, both individually and as Anthropic’s corporate designee, about Project Panama’s operation, the volume of books acquired, and how Anthropic used the resulting materials in AI training.”

It also argues that the publishers lose nothing by waiting, pointing to a safeguard the court itself raised: if torrenting discovery finishes before the Concord I summary judgment rulings arrive, the publishers can ask to expand phase one.

The two filings do not use the same term for the practice: the publishers call it destructive scanning, while Anthropic calls it book scanning and never uses the words songbook or sheet music.

In a footnote, Anthropic says the BMG plaintiffs took no position on the issue at the September 2 hearing, and that they “amended their complaint to add the words ‘destructive scanning’ to the text of their torrenting claim” the night before the statements were due.

BMG has since picked a side: its lawyers signed Friday’s statement jointly with the Concord II publishers.

Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei have each moved to dismiss parts of Concord II , with a hearing set for November 4 .

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music sued on August 28 , in a complaint that cites a “destructive scanning” operation on second-hand books.

That complaint quotes a 2024 planning document unsealed in Bartz : “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.”

Round Hill Music had filed a fourth case against Anthropic on August 17 , one of two complaints it lodged that day – the other against Suno . Its Anthropic case was related to Concord I and reassigned to Judge Lee on September 1, over its own objection; Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell ‘s followed on September 8.

BMG ‘s suit cites 493 compositions .

The court has ordered the parties to file a proposed coordination and case management order by September 23 .

Judge Lee had not ruled on the scanning discovery question at the time of writing. Music Business Worldwide

_Originally reported by [Music Business Worldwide](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/anthropic-bought-songbooks-scanned-them-and-destroyed-them-music-publishers-allege-now-they-want-to-know-which-songs-were-in-them/)._