A US judge has approved Anthropic’s US$1.5 billion settlement with book rightsholders, resolving claims over the artificial intelligence (AI) company’s acquisition, retention, and use of pirated books.

US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted final approval of the settlement in San Francisco. Anthropic said the agreement has been described as the largest publicly reported US copyright recovery.

The case, Bartz v. Anthropic, was filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson. It was later certified as a class action covering authors, publishers, estates, and other reproduction rights for about 500,000 eligible titles.

The settlement covers claims related to Anthropic’s acquisition, retention, and use of identified pirated works before August 25, 2025.

It follows Judge William Alsup’s June ruling that training Claude on lawfully acquired books was fair use, but that downloading and keeping more than 7 million copies from pirate libraries in a “central library” was not fair use and infringed copyright.

The agreement does not create a future licensing arrangement or cover claims that Claude’s outputs infringed copyright. It also requires Anthropic to destroy the pirated libraries and derivative copies within 30 days of final judgment.

🔗 Source: Reuters