ANTHROPIC WINS FINAL APPROVAL FOR $1.5BN COPYRIGHT SETTLEMENT

A US federal judge has granted final approval to Anthropic's $1.5bn settlement of a class action copyright lawsuit filed by authors and book publishers, marking the largest copyright settlement in US history. Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California issued the approval on Monday. The settlement will distribute approximately $3,000 to each of roughly 500,000 copyrighted works included in the class action. According to one report, more than 91 per cent of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the payment.

The original lawsuit, filed in 2024 by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, accused Anthropic of using copyrighted material to train its Claude AI model without authorisation. The court found that Anthropic had illegally acquired millions of books through shadow libraries LibGen and PiLiM, which the company downloaded. However, the judge ruled that Anthropic's use of the books for AI training was protected under fair use doctrine, which remains applicable law. Anthropic agreed to settle in August 2025, approximately one month after stating that a settlement could present a "death knell" situation for the company.

The settlement represents 0.8 per cent of Anthropic's valuation at the time of a $13bn Series F funding round last September. Anthropic stated that it is "looking forward to bringing this matter to a close" and noted that the settlement was reached "after the court's landmark ruling that training AI on books is fair use under copyright law". The class action certification last July marked the first in copyright litigation against AI companies.