News
Publishers seek Anthropic songbook-scan discovery; title-level list still undecided
Concord II plaintiffs (Concord / UMPG / ABKCO) and BMG filed statements on 11 September 2026 asking that Anthropic’s Project Panama — alleged purchase, scanning, and discarding of print songbooks — go into phase-one discovery at title level. MBW reported on 16 September. Anthropic says scanning belongs in phase two (training). Judge Lee had not ruled. Not a judgment. Not legal advice.
What happened
Concord II plaintiffs (Concord, UMPG, ABKCO) and BMG filed statements on 11 September 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Judge Eumi K. Lee). They allege Anthropic’s Project Panama bought print books including songbooks and sheet-music collections, scanned them, discarded the originals, and want title-level discovery in phase one. MBW reported on 16 September. Anthropic says scanning belongs in phase two (the training claim). There is no ruling.
What changed
Concord I covers lyric scraping. Concord II adds torrenting and print-book scanning. The court split phase one (torrenting) from phase two (training and outputs, paused for Concord I summary judgment). The fight is whether scanning goes into phase one. Anthropic says it produced a scanned-book index in Concord I and that Thomas Turvey testified. Judge Lee had not ruled at the time of the MBW article. Parties were ordered toward a coordination proposal by about 23 September.
Whose work this changes
For producers shipping lyric-capable generative AI to YouTube or games, lyric and score rights in the training pipeline can sit inside publisher litigation. Title-level identification is still the discovery dispute. MBW notes that in Bartz, training and purchased scanning were treated as fair use while keeping pirated copies in a permanent library was not. That is a different case. Do not write “commercially safe” before title discovery and the Concord I summary-judgment rulings.
Do this today
On any lyric-capable AI tool memo, record that Concord II / BMG scanning discovery is undecided and titles are unidentified. Do not use a commercial-safety assertion.
Sources
MBW (16 September 2026, secondary); publishers’ statement (11 September); Anthropic’s statement (same day). Clickable URLs are at the end of the article.
Source: Music Business Worldwide