Elvis, Anthropic, and the writers behind the song

On October 23, 2026, the companies that control Elvis Presley’s music rights sued Anthropic, the developer of the AI assistant Claude, in federal court in California. The complaint covers 274 songs, including Can’t Help Falling in Love, Don’t Be Cruel, and A Little Less Conversation. It alleges that their lyrics and compositions were used without permission to train Claude and that they appear in its responses. The suit came two days after Reservoir filed claims for over 853 songs, and a judge heard fair use arguments in a case brought by Concord, Universal, and ABKCO.

No court has ruled, and Anthropic maintains that training on published text is fair use.

Recording and composition

Elvis recorded Can’t Help Falling in Love in 1961. Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss wrote it, and the publishers who administer their words and melody hold rights separate from those in the recording. A lawsuit about lyrics concerns the writers’ work, yet the song is known everywhere by its singer’s name. The two halves of the song have different owners, and the public has always attached only one name to them.

Every dispute of this kind begins by identifying which works, recordings, and writers are at issue. Each of the 274 songs exists in studio takes, live albums, remasters, and cover versions, so the matching becomes a dispute of its own before the main argument starts.

The registry

ProofProfile is a registry of 9,900,355 recordings by 2,006,172 artists. Each recording is identified by its ISRC, the international code assigned to every commercial release. When data is available, a record links the recording to the work it performs, along with that work’s writers and publishers. The entry for Can’t Help Falling in Love includes the 1961 Elvis recording, its link to the composition, the three writers, and the publishers. It also lists other registered versions of the same song, including those by Andrea Bocelli, Kacey Musgraves, and David Bisbal, whose Spanish adaptation is titled Me Enamoré De Ti.

Timestamps

Every record is anchored on the Bitcoin blockchain, fixing its contents to a date that no one can change afterward, including ProofProfile. The Elvis record was anchored on June 13, 2026, four months before the suit was filed.

Anyone can verify it against the public chain without an account or relying on ProofProfile.

The data comes from music databases compiled before AI services began generating music. A competitor could rebuild the software behind the registry, but the dates are another matter because a record anchored today carries today’s date.

An anchor proves that a record existed in a given form by a given date. Authorship, ownership, and whether Claude ever read a lyric are settled by contracts and training records and decided by judges.

Uses for each side

For Anthropic, the registry turns the first question in every music claim into a lookup the opposing side can verify on its own. The same record lets Claude credit Peretti, Creatore, and Weiss for the lyrics and Elvis for the performance when someone asks about the song. For writers and publishers, it attaches their names to their work in a form no AI company can alter.

US law allows statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work infringed willfully. That puts the theoretical ceiling for the Elvis catalog at $41.1 million, before Reservoir’s 853 songs are counted.

The court sets the actual figure, and every new claim, whatever its size, begins by identifying the songs.

Independence

The registry is useful in these cases because no party controls it. A songwriter, an AI developer, and a reporter can each look up Can’t Help Falling in Love and receive the same record, dated before anyone filed suit.