Reddit says Anthropic is calling it an AI rival to restrict discovery

Why it matters

The ruling will shape whether training-data plaintiffs can inspect model-development evidence without exposing an AI defendant's trade secrets to their own product teams.

Reddit accused Anthropic of using trade-secret concerns to control who can examine evidence and how that evidence can be searched in the companies' legal fight over Claude's alleged use of Reddit data.

In a September 2nd reply memorandum, Reddit rejected what it called the "false premise that Reddit and Anthropic are competitors." Reddit said Anthropic is relying partly on Reddit's AI hiring and internal product work to justify tighter restrictions on confidential information during discovery.

The dispute is scheduled for a September 10th hearing at 9 a.m. before Judge Joseph M. Quinn in Department 302, according to the San Francisco Superior Court case record. The court will consider competing language for a protective order and an electronically stored information, or ESI, protocol.

Those rules will govern access to Anthropic's confidential records, the experts Reddit may retain, the treatment of technical identifiers and the tools each side can use to search documents. The hearing will not decide whether Anthropic unlawfully scraped Reddit or used its content to train Claude.

Anthropic's competitor argument

Anthropic wants to prevent Reddit in-house attorneys involved in AI models, machine learning, licensing, data acquisition, partnerships, product development or related business strategy from reviewing material designated "Highly Confidential - Attorneys' Eyes Only," according to Reddit's description of Anthropic's proposal.

Anthropic argues that Reddit's AI hiring and product work create a risk that sensitive information about Anthropic's models, training systems and operations could reach people involved in competitive decisions.

Reddit says that definition sweeps too broadly. Reddit describes its AI development as work on internal tools intended to improve its discussion platform, rather than an effort to sell a public foundation model to Anthropic's customers.

The practical effect could be significant for Reddit's legal department. Reddit says its in-house litigation team consists of three attorneys. Excluding one attorney under Anthropic's proposed rule would leave the other two with what Reddit calculates as a 50 percent increase in workload.

Reddit also says existing protections already restrict confidential material to the lawsuit and subject anyone who misuses it to the court's authority. Anthropic's position is that those general safeguards do not adequately address the risk posed by lawyers who also advise Reddit on AI or business strategy.

The fight over experts and dataset names

The companies also disagree about which academic experts should receive a presumption of access to protected material.

Anthropic wants an exception for academics whose current research concerns the creation of competing large language models or technologies designed to attack, circumvent or compromise them. Anthropic says those academics would not be automatically disqualified, but would remain subject to the protective order's disclosure and objection process.

Reddit argues that terms such as "attack," "circumvent" and "compromise" lack an objective boundary. The language could cover researchers studying model vulnerabilities, safety problems or limitations, Reddit says, giving Anthropic additional grounds to challenge qualified experts before the court considers their work.

The most technically consequential disagreement concerns documents that contain dataset names, filenames, modules, variables, crawlers or log fields without reproducing software code.

Anthropic argues that some identifiers can reveal proprietary training-data processing methods. A dataset's name, for example, could encode information about the steps used to assemble or transform training material. Anthropic therefore wants the option to give such records the same inspection-room restrictions applied to source code.

Reddit says those identifiers are not source code and can be protected under the less restrictive attorneys'-eyes-only designation. Treating them as source code would require review in a controlled inspection environment and could limit printing, making larger groups of records harder to examine and use in the case.

The parties separately disagree over when to impose print limits. Anthropic wants a presumptive cap designed to prevent sensitive material from leaving the inspection environment in volumes that could allow proprietary systems or dataset combinations to be reconstructed. Reddit wants the parties to assess any cap after its lawyers and experts have inspected the records and know what they need.

Who controls the electronic search

The ESI protocol raises a second control problem: how much each side must disclose before using automated tools to search and filter electronic records.

Reddit wants advance disclosure of technology-assisted review systems, including the general technology and the sources to which it will be applied. Reddit argues that the parties should resolve disputes before automated tools change the pool of documents available for human review.

Anthropic favors narrower disclosure requirements, particularly where a standard tool is used to organize or prioritize documents rather than exclude them from production. Reddit says that distinction could produce later fights over whether a system merely reordered records or prevented responsive documents from being reviewed.

Legacy data presents a similar dispute. Reddit wants potentially relevant legacy information preserved. Anthropic opposes a blanket obligation covering inaccessible or duplicative records. Reddit argues that Anthropic's proposed language could allow it to delete legacy data after deciding for itself that the material is duplicative or currently irrelevant. That is an allegation about the proposed protocol, not a claim that Anthropic has destroyed evidence.

Reddit filed the underlying lawsuit on June 4th, 2025, alleging breach of contract, unjust enrichment, trespass to chattels, tortious interference and unfair competition. Its complaint claims Anthropic violated Reddit's user agreement by scraping content for Claude without authorization. Anthropic has disputed Reddit's claims.

Anthropic moved the case to federal court, arguing that federal copyright law preempted Reddit's state claims. A federal judge sent the case back to San Francisco Superior Court on March 30th, 2026, finding that Reddit had alleged contractual, technical and privacy obligations beyond rights covered by copyright law.

The September 10th hearing could determine how much access Reddit receives to the evidence it says it needs, and how much control Anthropic retains over the lawyers, experts and search systems permitted to examine it.