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Judge Approves $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement With Authors

Final approval lets payouts proceed to authors whose pirated books were stored by Anthropic.

Overview

  • The U.S. district judge granted final approval to the $1.5 billion class settlement on Monday, allowing distribution and remediation steps to begin.
  • Under the deal roughly 482,000–500,000 covered works qualify and claimants are estimated to receive about $3,000 per eligible title after fees and expenses.
  • The court earlier found that using lawfully acquired books to train models can be fair use but held that Anthropic’s acquisition and storage of pirated copies was not protected.
  • Plaintiffs’ lawyers were awarded about $101.6 million in fees and major publishers including Bloomsbury are named beneficiaries, with Bloomsbury expecting roughly $19 million for 14,087 covered titles.
  • About 350 authors opted out to pursue separate claims and parallel lawsuits by other rights holders remain active, leaving broader legal rules for AI training and data provenance unresolved.