A U.S. federal judge has given final approval to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement of a class action copyright lawsuit, resolving what is considered the largest known copyright settlement on record in the United States. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin signed off on the deal on July 20.
The agreement resolves a lawsuit filed in August 2024 by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who accused Anthropic of using copyrighted books without permission to train its AI chatbot Claude. Under the terms, authors and publishers will receive $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 titles, with more than 91% of eligible claimants already having filed.
The case followed a June 2025 ruling by Judge William Alsup that training Claude on lawfully acquired books constituted fair use, but that Anthropic had illegally downloaded more than seven million books from pirate websites. Some writers had objected to the deal as insufficient.