SAN JOSE, California — A group of companies, trusts and individuals that say they control rights in 274 musical compositions recorded by Elvis Presley has sued Anthropic, alleging the artificial intelligence company copied the works without permission to train its Claude models.
The complaint was filed Friday, October 23, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs include ABG EPE IP LLC, Abilene Music LLC, Raleigh Music Publishing LLC and several trusts and individuals.
The filing identifies compositions including “All Shook Up,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “A Little Less Conversation” and “Return to Sender.” It alleges direct copyright infringement, circumvention of technological protection measures and removal or alteration of copyright-management information.
The claims are allegations and have not been proven. Anthropic told Reuters on Monday that it disagrees with the claims and intends to defend the case fully.
The plaintiffs seek an injunction, an accounting of training data and scraping activity, and damages. Their 28-page complaint requests up to $41.1 million in statutory copyright damages, plus as much as $685,000 for alleged circumvention and $6.85 million for alleged removal or alteration of copyright-management information. A court has not awarded any damages or ruled on the merits.
The lawsuit adds a prominent catalog to a widening group of music-rights cases against generative artificial intelligence companies. Last week, Reservoir Media sued Anthropic and Suno in separate cases involving hundreds of compositions.
The new case is ABG EPE IP LLC et al. v. Anthropic PBC, No. 5:26-cv-12473.