News publishers launch copyright suit against AI company Anthropic in Ontario
By The Canadian Press on October 19, 2026.
OTTAWA — A group of news publishers, including some of Canada's largest newspapers, is suing AI company Anthropic in an Ontario court.
Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, and The Canadian Press say Anthropic broke copyright law by using their content to develop Claude, its large language AI model.
“Anthropic has made money from the commercial success of its AI models, built a wide range of services, and raised large amounts of money — all without getting a valid licence from any of the News Media Companies,” the lawsuit says.
“As a result, Anthropic has gained significant and unfair benefits at the expense of the News Media Companies.”
The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 6 and was first reported by the news website Cartt.ca. Anthropic has not responded to a request for comment. The claims have not been proven in court.
The lawsuit says Anthropic broke the rules of the news websites and got around technical protections that the publishers had set up to stop people from copying their content.
The lawsuit says the news organizations produce a large share of Canada's journalism, from daily printed newspapers to news coverage published online around the clock. Together, they have millions of readers.
“To collect content for its models and services, Anthropic deliberately ‘scrapes’ the internet and the Plaintiffs’ Websites, meaning it accesses and copies huge amounts of text,” the lawsuit says.
The news organizations say Anthropic uses this content to develop its AI models without permission or consent. They also say the company keeps scraping content when users enter prompts.
“Despite concerns raised by many content creators in different industries, including through many other lawsuits and public criticism, Anthropic has done nothing to stop its unlawful actions,” the lawsuit says.
The same news organizations also sued OpenAI in 2024, together with CBC/Radio-Canada. That case has not yet been settled.
News publishers have been urging the federal government to take a position on how AI systems use copyrighted content. They raised the issue after the government's national AI strategy did not address it.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Oct. 16, 2026.
Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press