Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement of a class action copyright lawsuit brought by authors and publishers received final court approval on Monday. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin, sitting in the Northern District of California, signed off on the agreement, which is believed to be the largest settlement in the history of U.S. copyright law, according to Reuters.
The settlement covers an estimated 500,000 works and will pay $3,000 per work to the authors and publishers who hold rights to them. Judge Martinez-Olguin rejected arguments that the amount was too small, according to Reuters.
The lawsuit stemmed from accusations that Anthropic used copyrighted books without permission to train its AI chatbot Claude. A previous judge on the case, U.S. District Judge William Alsup, had ruled that training an AI model on copyrighted text constitutes fair use — a decision widely seen as significant for the broader AI industry, according to TechCrunch. Judge Alsup, who has since retired, had also found that Anthropic illegally obtained a portion of its training library by downloading books from pirate sites, including Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, rather than purchasing them.
With Judge Alsup having determined the piracy issue was triable, Anthropic moved to settle rather than face a jury and the possibility of substantial damages. Because Anthropic chose to settle rather than appeal, Judge Alsup’s fair use determination will never be reviewed by a higher court and carries no industry-wide legal force, according to TechCrunch.
Not all parties joined the settlement. Some authors and publishers opted out and are continuing separate cases against Anthropic, according to Reuters.
The resolution does not end broader litigation over AI and copyright. Lawsuits remain active against companies including Google, Meta, Midjourney, and OpenAI over whether training AI models on copyrighted works is legal. Just days ago, publishers Hachette, Cengage, and Elsevier joined author Scott Turow and advocacy group S.C.R.I.B.E. in bringing a fresh class action against Google, alleging the company trained its Gemini AI on their copyrighted material without authorization.