Anthropic
Judge approves Anthropic's $1.5bn book copyright settlement
Authors and publishers will be paid roughly $3,000 per work in what is believed to be the largest copyright settlement in US history.
The answer
A judge approved Anthropic's $1.5bn settlement with authors over pirated training books.
A US federal judge granted final approval on Monday 20 July 2026 to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with authors and publishers over books used to train its Claude chatbot.
Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said the deal resolves the authors' class action against the company, according to TechCrunch.
The settlement covers roughly 500,000 works, with payments averaging about $3,000 per work, TechCrunch reported. Payments to authors are now beginning.
TechCrunch said the deal is believed to be the largest copyright settlement in US history.
Anthropic obtained training books in two ways, buying and scanning physical copies and downloading books from pirate sites, according to the report.
The court had earlier ruled that training AI systems on copyrighted text counts as fair use, but that sourcing books from piracy sites did not. Anthropic settled rather than take the piracy claims to trial.
The settlement closes this case but does not set a binding precedent for the wider industry. Other copyright suits over AI training data remain pending against Google, Meta, Midjourney and OpenAI. In July, publisher Hachette and author Scott Turow also sued Google over data used to train its Gemini system.
Payments to affected authors continue following the approval, and the outcome of the remaining suits against other AI companies is still pending.
Sources
- Anthropic's landmark $1.5B copyright settlement is approved — TechCrunch, 20 July 2026