Anthropic cites Doe v. GitHub ruling to attack music publishers' DMCA claim in Concord I; summary-judgment hearing set for Oct. 21

What happened

On Sept. 17, 2026, Anthropic filed a statement of recent decision in Concord Music Group, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC (Concord I), N.D. Cal., No. 5:24-cv-03811-EKL (Judge Eumi K. Lee), pointing to the Ninth Circuit's Doe v. GitHub opinion issued the day before.

The argument

Doe v. GitHub affirmed dismissal of claims that an AI coding model removed copyright management information in violation of 17 U.S.C. 1202(b). Anthropic says the decision bears on the DMCA arguments in its combined motion for summary judgment and opposition (Dkt. 694), the publishers' combined opposition and reply (Dkt. 759), and its own reply (Dkt. 800), and it offered to file a short supplemental brief.

Context of the case

The music publishers moved on March 23, 2026 for partial summary judgment that Anthropic directly infringed 499 lyric works by copying them in training and in Claude's output and that the copying is not fair use. Anthropic's Sept. 8 reply argues that training a general-purpose model is a transformative use that must be judged separately from outputs under Warhol, that lyrics were swept in as a tiny fraction of publicly available web text, that users rather than Anthropic supply the volitional conduct behind any lyric output, and that the publishers lack evidence of market harm. The cross-motions are noticed for hearing on Oct. 21, 2026.

None of this has been decided; this is a defendant's filing arguing its side.