Canadian news publishers sue Anthropic in Ontario over Claude training

Four Canadian news publishers sued Anthropic in Ontario Superior Court on Oct. 6, 2026. The publishers are Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press. Their statement of claim says the AI company infringed their copyright by using their content to develop its large language model, Claude. The suit also names Anthropic’s Canadian subsidiary. The news site Cartt.ca first reported it. The allegations have not been proven in court.

What the claim says

The publishers say Anthropic copied their work without permission or payment. “Anthropic has capitalized on the commercial success of its AI models, building an expansive suite of services, and raised significant capital,” the statement of claim says, “all without obtaining a valid licence from any of the News Media Companies.”

“In doing so, Anthropic has been substantially and unjustly enriched to the detriment of the News Media Companies,” it says.

The suit goes beyond copyright. It says Anthropic breached the terms of service on the publishers’ websites. It also says Anthropic circumvented technological protection measures the publishers put in place to restrict copying.

“To obtain content for ingestion into its models and services, Anthropic deliberately ‘scrapes’ (i.e. accesses and copies) enormous amounts of text data from the internet and from the Plaintiffs’ Websites,” the claim says.

The publishers say Anthropic uses that content, without authorization or consent, to develop its AI models. They also say the company scrapes their content on an ongoing basis in response to user prompts. That claim covers more than past training. It is about how Claude works when people use it today.

The claim describes the plaintiffs as responsible for a significant portion of Canada’s journalism, with millions of readers combined. It says that “notwithstanding concerns raised by several content creators across various industries, including through numerous other lawsuits and public criticism, Anthropic has done nothing to curtail its unlawful behaviour.”

Broadcast Dialogue reports that the publishers seek damages, disgorgement of profits and a permanent injunction, or statutory damages of up to $20,000 per infringed work as an alternative.

A second Canadian case

The same four companies sued OpenAI in 2024, together with CBC/Radio-Canada. That suit also alleges the publishers’ content was scraped to train AI systems. The Canadian Press reports that the case has not been settled.

Publishers in other countries have brought similar suits. The New York Times is suing OpenAI over the use of its copyrighted material. CBC reports that the U.S. Justice Department sided with OpenAI in that case in September 2026.

The policy backdrop

The Canadian Press reports that news publishers have been pressing the federal government to take a position on how AI systems use copyrighted content. They are pushing because the government’s national AI strategy did not address the issue.

Anthropic had not responded to a request for comment from The Canadian Press as of Oct. 19.

About the reporting

The Canadian Press, one of the plaintiffs, wrote the news report this story relies on for the claim’s wording. CBC and Yahoo Finance Canada both published that report. Broadcast Dialogue, a sister publication of Cartt.ca and not a party to the suit, separately reported the court, the filing date and the Canadian subsidiary. CBC/Radio-Canada is a co-plaintiff with these publishers in the separate OpenAI case.