Judge Approves 1.5bn$ AI Copyright Settlement

Judge Alsup, of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, granted preliminary approval of the parties' proposed settlement of certain infringement claims in Bartz v. Anthropic, an agreement that requires Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion dollars to the authors and publishers of nearly half a million books it downloaded from notorious pirate sites to feed AI models.

As noted in AAP's communications, Anthropic, headquartered in San Francisco, California, is currently valued at $183 billion dollars, five times larger than the aggregate revenue of the U.S. publishing market last year.

A number of resources have been made available to help authors and publishers navigate the settlement:

• The website from the claims administrator is here. It includes comprehensive information about the case, settlement, and claims process, including a searchable tool to see if your books are included and a claims form. The website also lists multiple avenues for you to ask questions and get them answered.
• Updated publisher-specific FAQs are available on AAP's website here.

AAP President and CEO Maria A. Pallante said: This settlement is a major step in the right direction in holding AI developers accountable for reckless and unabashed infringement. Piracy is an astonishingly poor decision for a tech company, and-as the settlement figure demonstrates-an expensive one. The law should not reward AI companies that profit by stealing.

As it becomes clearer and clearer that one AI company after another has helped itself to the intellectual property of authors and publishers, we hope that courts will recognize that the unlicensed, carte blanche use of copyrighted works for AI training is not transformative and not fair use. Rather, it flies in the face of the Constitutional objectives of copyright law and undermines the full and safe potential of AI for all of us. AI companies have an interest and a responsibility to respect and sustain the very industries they rely on to advance their technology. They have a duty to share the tremendous commercial value they have achieved in no small part from the talents and investments of creators.

Anthropic is hardly a special case when it comes to infringement. Every other major AI developer has trained their models on the backs of authors and publishers, and many have sourced those works from the most notorious infringing sites in the world. This conduct isn't only an attack on copyright law; it's an astonishing breach of trust with their AI customers and our future society.

Make no mistake that the court's preliminary approval of this settlement is a very big deal and cause for celebration in the AI copyright docket. It would not have been possible without the tremendous efforts of publishers and publishers' coordination counsel, authors and authors' coordination counsel, and class counsel, all working together in the interests of all class members. We also recognize the bravery of the three original authors in the underlying suit.

AAP will continue to speak with and be available to counsel on legal and industry questions in this case, and as notice and claims details move forward, we will continue to request and broadly share that information with the publishing community.

Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association (UK) said: This is a significant moment in the ongoing global debate around copyright and AI. For the first time, a major AI company has agreed to pay publishers and authors for using pirated material in its training data, which is a clear win for rightsholders with copyright registered in the US and - we hope - a signal to tech companies worldwide that they must license works and establish a functioning market for AI training. It's important that we all recognise that this outcome is fundamentally limited, however, in that it is only past use of pirated book content for training that is covered. The outcome does not establish a clear precedent that all copyright-protected content must be licensed and paid for in AI training, either in the US or globally.

"Overall, this is a step in the right direction in the US, but the bigger battle for saving copyright in the world of AI domestically and globally is still very much on. Here in the UK that means the government needs to turn its mind to the AI Bill and prioritise ensuring AI firms are transparent about the content they have used. The data which has enabled this settlement demonstrates that granular transparency is technically possible, despite the lobby of big tech to the contrary. The largest tech firms have launched a land grab on the world's content and are hoping governments and judiciaries around the world won't catch up. The government should be emboldened by this settlement and show leadership by restoring order to the content ecosystem and making everyone play fair.

On June 23, 2025, Judge Alsup of the District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order indicating that copyright infringement claims related to Anthropic's mass copying of books from illegal shadow libraries could move forward to trial. On July 17, he certified the class for these piracy claims, which by class definition includes publishers as well as authors.

On August 25, the parties jointly submitted a statement of potential settlement to the court, and on 5 September submitted the proposed settlement agreement, which Judge Alsup will considered at a preliminary approval hearing on September 8. Having declined to approve the settlement at that hearing, the Judge finally granted his approval, following further coordination between the parties.