A federal judge in San Francisco has granted final approval to Anthropic’s landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by a group of authors who accused the artificial intelligence company of misusing their books to train its AI chatbot, Claude.
US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin approved the settlement on Monday, describing it as the largest known settlement in a US copyright case, while rejecting objections from authors who argued that the agreement was too small.
The case is one of dozens of copyright lawsuits filed by authors, publishers and news organisations against technology companies over the use of copyrighted material to train large language models. It is also the first major AI copyright case in the United States to reach a settlement. The agreement had received preliminary approval from now-retired Judge William Alsup last September.
In a statement, Anthropic Deputy General Counsel Aparna Sridhar welcomed the court’s decision, saying the settlement followed a landmark legal ruling on AI training.
“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,” Sridhar said.
She added that the overwhelming majority of eligible claimants had accepted the settlement.
“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.”
The authors’ lead attorney, Justin Nelson, also hailed the outcome, describing it as a historic victory for copyright holders.
“It is the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible,” Nelson said, referring to payments that will be made to authors covered by the settlement.
The lawsuit, filed in 2024, alleged that Anthropic used pirated copies of books without permission to train Claude, its artificial intelligence chatbot. The company is backed by Amazon and Alphabet.
Judge Alsup ruled in June last year that Anthropic’s use of copyrighted books to train Claude constituted fair use under US copyright law. However, he also found that the company had infringed the authors’ rights by storing more than seven million pirated books in what he described as a “central library,” regardless of whether those works were ultimately used for AI training.
A trial had been scheduled to begin last December to determine the damages Anthropic could owe for the alleged piracy, with potential liability estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The proposed settlement drew objections from some authors, who argued that the compensation was inadequate, that plaintiffs’ lawyers would receive an excessive share of the funds, and that certain copyright owners had been unfairly excluded.
Judge Martinez-Olguin dismissed those objections, ruling that criticisms of the settlement amount were “not grounded in a realistic assessment of the overall risks and rewards of a trial.”
She also approved more than $101 million in legal fees for the plaintiffs’ attorneys, out of the $187.5 million they had requested.
Despite the settlement, some authors and publishers opted out of the agreement and have filed separate lawsuits against Anthropic, which remain pending.
Boluwatife Enome
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