Judge Allowed Reddit Lawsuit Against Anthropic

A San Francisco court permitted three claims to proceed in a case involving AI training data scraping.

Updated on Sept. 19, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence

Isometric editorial illustration of a stone plinth holding crystalline fragments, representing a legal challenge to data scraping practices. — A San Francisco court allowed three claims in Reddit's lawsuit against Anthropic, permitting litigation over the unauthorized use of user data for AI training to proceed. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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A San Francisco Superior Court judge has allowed three claims in Reddit's lawsuit against AI company Anthropic to move forward. The court rejected Anthropic's argument that Reddit's user agreement was unenforceable while dismissing two other claims.

Why it matters

The ruling advances a significant legal challenge regarding whether AI companies can scrape user data from platforms to train chatbots without explicit permission. Reddit alleges that Anthropic ignored its usage terms despite similar deals already being signed with other AI developers.

The court permitted three of five initial claims to proceed against Anthropic. Evidence presented noted that Anthropic scraped Reddit content more than 100,000 times to train its Claude chatbot.

The players

Harold Kahn

He is a judge at the San Francisco Superior Court who oversaw the motion to dismiss in this case.

It is a social media platform that has actively sought to monetize its data through licensing deals with AI companies.

Anthropic

It is an artificial intelligence startup that develops the Claude chatbot and competes in the generative AI market.

The details

Judge Harold Kahn overruled Anthropic's demurrer, allowing litigation to continue regarding breach of contract, interference with contract, and violations of California's unfair competition law. The judge dismissed claims of unjust enrichment and trespass to chattels but granted Reddit leave to amend and refile those by October 16.

Reddit secured licensing deals with Google and OpenAI in 2024.
The initial complaint was filed by Reddit in June 2025.
Judge Harold Kahn signed the order on September 17, 2026.
The court officially filed the judge's order on September 18, 2026.
Reddit has until October 16, 2026, to refile its dismissed claims.

Roadmap

This case highlights the intensifying conflict between platform owners and AI developers over the right to scrape training data. It marks a departure from earlier periods where automated web scraping was largely unregulated and contested only through basic terms of service.

This litigation directly affects how AI companies access and use public online content. Users may eventually see shifts in platform privacy policies or access rules as companies strive to protect their data from automated scraping by large language models.

The takeaway

The court's decision underscores the growing legal risk for AI firms that ignore platform terms of service when training their models. Developers must navigate an increasingly complex landscape where web scraping is no longer treated as a free-for-all.