Concord Music Group, Inc., et al. v. Anthropic PBC

Background

The court considered administrative motions to seal materials connected with several discovery disputes and an October 10, 2025 discovery hearing. Anthropic supported the Publishers’ sealing requests where appropriate, and the Publishers did not oppose the motions.

Because the materials concerned discovery disputes rather than the merits of the case, the court applied the lower “good cause” standard for sealing. The court found good cause to protect nonpublic information about training-data sources and other competitively sensitive information.

Rulings on the Sealing Requests

The court granted in part and denied in part the request concerning the Publishers’ third set of requests for production. It denied sealing the mention of “YouTube subtitles” because the Publishers’ public complaint alleged that information and Anthropic had not sought to seal it. The court granted the request as to information on page 10, lines 3–4, because the Publishers did not oppose sealing it, although the court was not convinced that the information was competitively sensitive.

The court granted the requests concerning the Publishers’ seventh set of requests for production and Anthropic’s responses and objections to the Publishers’ first set of interrogatories.

For the joint discovery statement concerning the deposition of Dario Amodeti, the court granted the request as to page 4, line 20 through page 5, line 2, finding that the material contained competitively sensitive details about Anthropic’s development of Claude. It denied the request as to page 5, lines 7–8, and denied the request concerning material on page 9 because Anthropic had not sought to keep that material under seal.

The court granted the requests concerning specified portions of the October 10, 2025 hearing transcript. It found that the transcript contained nonpublic information about noncommercial training data and that disclosure could cause competitive harm to Anthropic.

Orders to the Clerk and the Parties

The court directed the clerk to keep Dockets 438-1, 438-2, 438-3, 444-1, and 481 under seal. It ordered Anthropic to file replacement redacted copies of Dockets 438-1 and 444-1 by November 14, 2025. The court also directed the clerk to unseal Docket 456-3 pursuant to Anthropic’s notice of withdrawal.

Disposition

Magistrate Judge Susan Van Keulen granted in part and denied in part the sealing motions. The order addressed access to discovery-related records and did not decide the underlying copyright or other merits issues in the case.