Canadian news publishers sue Anthropic over alleged scraping of journalism to train Claude

What happened

A coalition of Canadian media organizations filed suit against Anthropic and its Canadian subsidiary in Ontario Superior Court on Oct. 6, 2026, alleging the company systematically scraped millions of their copyrighted news works to train and operate its commercial models, including Claude. Plaintiffs include the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Metroland Media, Postmedia Network, PNI Maritimes LP, and The Canadian Press, which says about 4.2 million of its works were taken.

Allegations

The claim accuses Anthropic of harvesting works without permission, licensing, or compensation in violation of the Copyright Act; using automated crawlers (e.g. ClaudeBot) for commercial purposes in breach of binding contractual terms; circumventing paywalls and login authentications; and diverting readers and advertising revenue, creating substitutes for the publishers' sites. Relief sought: copyright infringement, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, general damages, an accounting and disgorgement of profits or alternatively statutory damages up to $20,000 per work, plus punitive damages and a permanent injunction.

Context

The plaintiffs cite the U.S. ruling finding Anthropic downloaded over seven million pirated book copies, and note Anthropic has not executed any public publisher licensing agreement. Anthropic has not yet filed a statement of defence; foreign defendants served outside Ontario have up to 60 days to respond.