US judge approves Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright lawsuit settlement

By: Blake Brittain Source: Reuters

A federal judge in San Francisco on Monday approved artificial intelligence company Anthropic's landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by authors who accused the company of misusing their books to train its AI chatbot, Claude.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted final approval of the settlement—the largest known settlement of a U.S. copyright case—rejecting arguments that the amount was too small.

The case is one of dozens filed by copyright owners, including authors and news outlets, against tech companies over the training of large language models. It is the first major U.S. case to settle.

Now-retired Judge William Alsup initially approved the deal in September 2025.

Key Statements

Anthropic Deputy General Counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement:

"We reached this settlement in 2025, after the court's landmark ruling that training AI on books is fair use under copyright law — which remains the law today. We are pleased that more than 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the payment, and we're looking forward to bringing this matter to a close."

Lead Attorney for the Authors, Justin Nelson, welcomed what he called a "historic settlement":

"It is the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible."

Background

• The writers sued Anthropic in 2024, arguing that the company—backed by Amazon and Alphabet—used pirated versions of their books without permission to train Claude to respond to human prompts.
• In June 2025, Judge Alsup ruled that Anthropic made fair use of the authors' work to train Claude, but found the company violated their rights by saving more than 7 million pirated books to a "central library" not necessarily used for AI training.
• A trial was scheduled for December 2025 to determine damages for alleged piracy, with potential liability reaching hundreds of billions of dollars.

Objections and Ruling

The settlement drew objections from some authors who argued it was:

• Not large enough
• Overcompensated the plaintiffs' attorneys
• Wrongly excluded some copyright owners

Judge Martinez-Olguin overruled these objections on Monday, stating that complaints about the settlement's size were "not grounded in a realistic assessment of the overall risks and rewards of a trial." She awarded attorneys more than $101 million of the $187.5 million they requested in fees.

Ongoing Litigation

Some authors and publishers opted out of the settlement and have filed separate lawsuits against Anthropic that remain ongoing.

Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Sanjeev Miglani, and Stephen Coates