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The Elvis lawsuit and the training copies made in Taiwan
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The Elvis lawsuit and the training copies made in Taiwan

8 min read

Written in response to a news report. Facts and law may have changed since the publication date.

Authentic Brands Group sued Anthropic on Friday, October 23, BBC News reported and CNA reported on October 26, 2026, accusing the company of using 274 Elvis songs to train its model without paying for a licence. CNA gave the same count and described the group as holding both the music catalog and the likeness rights.

For a developer in Taipei fine-tuning a model on song lyrics or recordings, the US case settles nothing yet. Are those training copies reproduction under the Copyright Act, and can fair use cover them?

What the complaint asks for

BBC News said the songs named include All Shook Up, Can't Help Falling in Love, A Little Less Conversation, Don't Be Cruel and Return To Sender. The complaint, as BBC reported it, says those songs were used to create unlicensed derivative works.

Payments run up to $150,000 per infringed song, BBC News said, adding up to $41 million. CNA gave its own approximate conversion: about NT$4.77 million a song, and about NT$1,305,850,000 for the total it reported as about $41 million.

Anthropic's spokesperson told BBC News: "We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully."

BBC News also quoted the complaint as saying the company "has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before."

The same story quoted the complaint as saying that guardrails the company "supposedly put up" after being sued did not stop it, and that when asked to recreate specific songs "for a modern audience," the model described its own output as landing "very close to the originals."

Reservoir accused the company of taking lyrics the previous week. Universal Music Group sued in January. BBC News said both remain ongoing. Last year, BBC News reported, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action by authors. Lawyers for the authors called that the largest publicly reported copyright recovery.

A file on a Taipei server

Authors hold the exclusive right to reproduce the work, unless the act says otherwise. Article 22 of the Copyright Act is that grant. A performer has a separate exclusive right to reproduce the performance by sound recording, video recording or photography.

Reproduction, in Article 3, includes direct or indirect, permanent or temporary, repeated making by printing, copying, sound recording, video recording, photography, transcription or another method. Recording a musical work when it is performed or broadcast counts as well.

Paragraph 3 of Article 22 withholds that exclusive right only in a narrow case. The copy has to be temporary. It has to be solely for lawful intermediary transmission on a network, or for lawful use of the work. The reproduction has to be a necessary, transitional and incidental part of a technical process, and it has to lack independent economic significance. Computer program works are left outside that withholding. A lyrics file that is stored and used again has to be set against those conditions. The paragraph does not, by itself, bless or condemn every training copy.

When the rightsholder is not in Taiwan

Foreign works enter the act through Article 4. A treaty or agreement the Legislative Yuan has approved prevails where it says otherwise. Otherwise a foreigner's work may be protected in one of the listed cases. One is first publication inside the Republic of China, or publication here within 30 days after a first publication abroad, and only where that foreigner's own country protects works of Republic of China nationals in the same situation, after that protection has been verified. That is the first listed case. Another is where, under a treaty, an agreement, or that country's laws or practice, works of Republic of China nationals enjoy copyright there.

Two office letters about pictures

On August 29, 2025, the Intellectual Property Office answered an email about training on historical photographs. The reply says that using a work still inside its term to train a model differs from adaptation, even when the training result is mathematical parameters and weights. Adaptation, which Article 3 defines as creating anew from the original by translation, arrangement, rewriting, filming or another method, is a different act. The training process is the part the letter flags. Collection, preprocessing, model training and optimization may each involve reproduction of the source. Absent fair use under Articles 44 to 65, the letter says a license is still required, and civil and criminal liability may follow.

Output is a separate step in that letter. If there is no new creation based on the original, the office said that output is not adaptation. On the facts the writer of the email had described, no substantial similarity, or similarity only in an unprotected fact such as how a building looked, the output would not infringe the training image. Those were the facts in the email.

Where a user treats the system only as a tool and adds new creativity to an existing work, to the point of creating something new from it, the letter says that can still be adaptation and needs the owner's consent or license. Copyright is a private right, the letter adds. Whether a given case is adaptation or infringement is for a court, on the evidence.

An earlier reply, dated December 12, 2022, answered a question about artworks run through a generative picture tool. Learning from those works may be reproduction. Absent a fair-use case under Articles 44 to 65, the letter says a license is required. The office said that use was not a situation covered by Articles 44 to 63. It then pointed at Article 65, paragraph 2. Purpose and character of the use, the nature of the work, the amount and the share of the whole, and the effect on the potential market and present value, are weighed together. There is no fixed standard. A court decides both infringement and fair use.

Protection stops at expression. Article 10-1 reaches the expression of the work. It does not reach the idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery that the expression carries. The December reply used that line for the picture that comes out, and gave style as an example of what falls outside. An output that differs from the original and only shows style was, in that letter, not an infringement. A line of lyric that stays close to the song is not the example the letter gave.

Both letters are about pictures. Neither mentions this complaint, Elvis, or a music catalog. They do state how this office reads reproduction, adaptation and fair use when someone trains on works that are still protected.

Four factors, not a switch

Fair use of a work is not an infringement of economic rights. Article 65 opens with that short rule.

Paragraph 2 then tells a court how to decide whether a use fits the fair range in Articles 44 to 63, or some other fair use. All the circumstances count. Particular attention goes to four matters: the purpose and character of the use, including whether it is commercial or for nonprofit teaching; the nature of the work; the amount used and its proportion of the whole work; and the effect of the use on the work's potential market and present value. An agreement between a rightsholder group and a user group on the range of fair use may be taken as a reference. While that agreement is being reached, the copyright authority may be consulted.

A commercial training set built from whole lyrics, and an existing market for licensing those songs, are the kind of facts a court weighs under the first, third and fourth factors. The article does not rank the factors, and the December 2022 letter said there is no fixed standard.

When the copy, not the docket, is here

Attorney Wei Tseng (曾雋崴) at Hovering International Law Firm (昊鼎國際法律事務所) takes consultations where the lyrics file, the training set or the published output is in Taiwan: whether Article 4 reaches the work, whether the copy meets Article 22, and how the four factors in Article 65 sit on those facts.

Write to wei@hoveringlaw.com.tw. Offices: 7F-2, No. 35, Sec. 1, Chengde Rd., Datong Dist., Taipei City 103, Taiwan (103 臺北市大同區承德路一段35號7樓之2), and 6F-1, No. 19, Guanqian Rd., North Dist., Taichung City 40453, Taiwan (40453 臺中市北區館前路19號6樓之1).

Where the file sits, whether it is a stored lyric or only an output, and the date the copy was made, are the facts that measurement starts from.

Fictional scene

Sources

Checked: October 27, 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

Has a US court decided that Anthropic infringed those songs?
No. The complaint was filed on Friday, October 23, according to BBC News and CNA's October 26, 2026 report. Authentic Brands Group accuses Anthropic of using 274 Elvis songs without a licence and of making unlicensed derivative works. Anthropic told BBC News it disagrees and will defend the case fully.
Does Taiwan's fair-use clause automatically allow a company to train on a whole catalog?
No. Article 65 says fair use is not an infringement of economic rights, and paragraph 2 lists purpose and character, the nature of the work, the amount and proportion used, and the effect on the potential market and present value. In a December 12, 2022 email reply about pictures, the Intellectual Property Office said the use described there was not one of the situations in Articles 44 to 63, and that Article 65, paragraph 2, is a case-by-case judgment with no fixed standard. An August 29, 2025 reply about historical photographs said the training process may be reproduction and that, absent fair use under Articles 44 to 65, a license is still required.
If the output only imitates a style, does that clear the training copies?
No. The August 29, 2025 reply treated the training process separately: it may still be reproduction even when the result is parameters and weights. The December 12, 2022 reply, citing Article 10-1, said protection covers expression and not the idea, and gave style as an example of what is not protected, so an output that differs from the original and only shows style was not, on that letter's terms, an infringement of the original. A lyric that tracks the song is a different comparison from a mere style.

This article provides general information and is not legal advice on any individual matter.

Related reading

Elvis filing and Taiwan fair use | Hovering Law