Legion LegalTech, a litigation technology company founded in 2024, filed a lawsuit June 23 in federal court in Washington, D.C. challenging a US Commerce Department order that restricts foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic’s advanced AI models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 [1, 2, 3].
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued the order June 12 requiring Anthropic to block foreign users from these AI systems [4, 1, 3]. To comply, Anthropic disabled access for all users to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on the same day. Access to Fable 5 was later partially restored with nationality-based controls and enhanced compliance screening [4, 2, 3].
Legion employs Canadian nationals working remotely from Canada who lost immediate access to Fable 5 due to the order. The company said this disrupted their development and operations, causing “immediate, irreparable, and existential” harm that cannot be made up during rapid AI progress [4, 1, 2, 3]. Legion co-founder and CEO Arthur Rothrock questioned whether similar restrictions could target other companies like OpenAI in the future [1].
The lawsuit names Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who had warned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about export restrictions, as a defendant [1]. Legion is seeking to have the government order revoked and requested a preliminary injunction to block its enforcement [3].
Anthropic is not a plaintiff but expressed appreciation for the government’s cooperation to resolve the issue quickly and stated it remains “committed to working alongside the government towards our shared goals of protecting critical infrastructure and making sure the US leads in AI” [1, 3].
Legion LegalTech emphasized that each day the order remains in force “disrupts Legion’s product, operations, sidelines its engineers, and erodes the company’s ability to survive in a field defined by continuous access to the most capable models” [1].
