Reddit, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC
Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco (removed to N.D. Cal., then remanded)
- Court
- Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco (removed to N.D. Cal., then remanded)
- Docket
- CGC-25-625892 (S.F. Superior Court); 3:25-cv-05643 (N.D. Cal. removed action)
- Parties
- Plaintiff: Reddit, Inc. Defendant: Anthropic PBC
- Claim type
- ip-scraping
- Filed
- 2025-06-04
- Outcome
- Judge Trina L. Thompson (N.D. Cal.) signed an order on March 28, 2026 granting Reddit's motion to remand (entered on the docket March 30, 2026), holding that Reddit's five state-law claims (breach of contract, unjust enrichment, trespass to chattels, tortious interference with contract, and unfair competition under Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code section 17200) each contain an 'extra element' qualitatively different from rights protected by the Copyright Act and are therefore not preempted. The case returned to San Francisco Superior Court, where it remains pending. No judgment on the merits or settlement reported. (As of Sept. 2026.)
Summary
Reddit, Inc. sued Anthropic PBC on June 4, 2025 in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging Anthropic scraped Reddit user content without authorization to train its Claude large language models, in violation of Reddit's User Agreement. Reddit asserted California state-law claims including breach of contract, unjust enrichment, trespass to chattels, tortious interference, and unfair competition under Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code section 17200. Anthropic removed the case to federal court, arguing the claims were effectively copyright claims subject to exclusive federal jurisdiction. Judge Trina L. Thompson rejected that argument in an order signed March 28, 2026 and entered March 30, 2026, remanding the case to state court after finding each of the five state-law claims contained extra elements beyond copyright infringement, including alleged breach of the User Agreement's access restrictions and misrepresentations about honoring robots.txt after Anthropic's bots kept scraping. The case remains pending in California state court.
Related issue
Sources
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