Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement with authors has been approved
What's the story
Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company, has received final approval for its $1.5 billion settlement with authors over copyright infringement. The settlement was approved by US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in San Francisco. This is the largest known settlement in a US copyright case and comes after a class action lawsuit was filed against Anthropic by a group of authors who accused it of misusing their books to train its AI chatbot Claude.
Settlement specifics
Settlement to be distributed at $3,000 per work
The settlement will be distributed at $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works among authors and publishers who own the rights.
The decision to approve the settlement was made by Judge Martinez-Olguin, who rejected arguments that it was too small.
The case is one of many copyright lawsuits filed by authors and news outlets against tech companies over their large language models.
Legal perspective
Over 91% of authors, publishers claimed their share of payment
Anthropic deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said they reached the settlement in 2025 after a court ruling that training AI on books is fair use under copyright law.
She added that over 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of payment.
The lead attorney for the authors, Justin Nelson, called it a "historic settlement" and "the largest known copyright recovery in history."
Case background
Authors sued Anthropic in 2024
The authors had sued Anthropic in 2024, alleging that the company used pirated versions of their books without permission to train Claude.
Judge William Alsup ruled last June that while Anthropic made fair use of the authors' work to train Claude, it violated their rights by saving over seven million pirated books to a "central library."
This library wouldn't necessarily be used for AI training.
Legal challenges
Settlement has drawn objections from some authors
The settlement has drawn objections from some authors who believe it is insufficient, overcompensates plaintiffs' attorneys, or wrongly excludes some copyright owners.
However, Judge Martinez-Olguin dismissed these objections in her ruling.
She said complaints about the settlement's size were "not grounded in a realistic assessment of the overall risks and rewards of a trial," and awarded attorneys more than $101 million of the $187.5 million they requested in fees.