Anthropic’s landmark $1.5B copyright settlement is approved - TechCrunch

What the report says

TechCrunch, citing Reuters, reported that a federal judge has granted final approval to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement in a class-action copyright case brought by authors and book publishers. Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California signed off on the deal Monday, allowing payments to begin to rights holders covered by the case.

The settlement is expected to provide about $3,000 for each of roughly 500,000 works, with payments shared by eligible authors and publishers. The case followed an earlier ruling by Judge William Alsup, who had found that Anthropic unlawfully downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books. TechCrunch reported that Alsup, who has since retired, had previously given preliminary approval to the settlement.

The outcome is significant but limited. Alsup ruled that using copyrighted books to train an AI model could qualify as fair use, a finding seen as favorable to AI companies. However, he separated that question from Anthropic’s acquisition of some books from pirate sites, including Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, which he found could proceed toward trial. Anthropic settled before a jury could consider damages.

TechCrunch noted that the final approval ends this particular dispute but does not settle the broader copyright fight over AI training. Because the case will not go to an appeals court, the ruling does not create binding nationwide precedent. Similar lawsuits remain pending against companies including Google, Meta, Midjourney and OpenAI, while publishers and authors recently filed a new case accusing Google of using copyrighted works to train Gemini.