Reddit Keeps Three Claims Alive Against Anthropic as a Judge Rejects Its Contract Challenge

Reddit (RDDT) is the company in the spotlight in its fight with Anthropic. A San Francisco Superior Court judge has allowed three of Reddit's five claims over alleged scraping to move forward, a procedural win that keeps alive its argument that AI companies must honor the terms they agree to when they take data. Reddit shares fell 4.01% on Monday to close at $138.47.

What the judge decided

Judge Harold Kahn overruled Anthropic's demurrer, a challenge arguing that even if everything in Reddit's complaint is true, it does not state a valid legal claim. The order is dated Sept. 17 and was entered on the docket Sept. 18. Judge Kahn found Reddit had provided enough to allege that Anthropic is bound by Reddit's User Agreement, and rejected the argument that the agreement is an unenforceable "browsewrap" contract, pointing to allegations that Anthropic kept scraping more than 100,000 times after Reddit's CEO publicly objected.

The court also held that the surviving claims are not preempted by federal copyright law, reasoning that each rests on state interests beyond copying, including allegations that Anthropic trained its models on Reddit content with no way to honor users' deletion requests. Reddit was given until Oct. 16 to refile the two dismissed claims. By our calculation, three of the five claims, or 60%, cleared this hurdle without amendment.

A Reddit spokesperson said the ruling "sends a strong message—AI companies don't get a free pass to ignore the law."

How the case got here

Reddit sued Anthropic in June 2025, alleging it scraped Reddit user data to train its Claude models without permission. The case began in California state court, Anthropic moved it to federal court arguing copyright law preempted every claim, and the federal court sent it back to state court in March 2026. Reddit has licensing agreements with Alphabet and OpenAI that let them use its data to train AI models; Anthropic has no such agreement, according to Reddit's complaint.

The case remains in early stages. A case management conference is set for Dec. 2, and discovery disputes between the parties have been referred to a discovery referee. Nothing in the ruling decides whether Anthropic is liable.

What it means for investors

Reddit's data licensing business depends on the idea that its content has a price. A court willing to enforce its User Agreement against an AI company that never signed a deal strengthens its hand in licensing talks, and a loss would do the opposite. Monday's decline shows the legal progress is not what is driving the stock day to day; the shares closed at $138.47, down $5.78. The risk for Reddit is a long, expensive case with an uncertain end, and for Anthropic, which has filed to go public, it is another legal exposure to disclose.

Sources: San Francisco County Superior Court, Reddit, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC, No. CGC-25-625892 (demurrer order dated Sept. 17, 2026; docket entry Sept. 18). Reddit's statement is as provided by a company spokesperson. This is informational, not a recommendation to buy or sell.