Thousands of Authors Seek Share of Anthropic Copyright Settlement

Nearly 120,000 authors and other copyright holders are seeking a share of a $1.5 billion class action settlement with Anthropic over the company’s unauthorised use of their books in artificial intelligence training, according to a filing in a California federal court.

Claims have been filed for 91 per cent of the more than 480,000 works covered by the settlement, according to a court filing in the case on Thursday.

A judge will consider whether to grant final approval to the settlement — the largest ever in a US copyright case — at a hearing next month.

Anthropic was the first, and remains the only, major AI company to settle a US class action brought by copyright holders alleging that AI platforms used their work without permission to train systems. A lead attorney for the authors pointed to the high proportion of claims filed as a sign of the case’s success.

“This claims rate is another reason why this settlement is so historic and demonstrates the overwhelming support of the class,” Justin Nelson of Susman Godfrey told Reuters on Friday.

The median claims rate for consumer class actions in the United States is 9 per cent, according to a 2019 report from the US Federal Trade Commission.

The settlement has also drawn objections from some authors, who argue that it is not large enough, overcompensates the plaintiffs’ lawyers, or wrongly excludes some foreign copyright owners.

Spokespeople for Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The authors sued Anthropic in 2024, arguing that the company, which is backed by Amazon and Alphabet, used pirated versions of their books without permission or compensation to train Claude to respond to human prompts. The case is one of dozens brought by copyright owners, including authors and news outlets, against technology companies over the training of large language models, and is the first major US case to settle.

US District Judge William Alsup ruled last June that Anthropic made fair use of the authors’ work to train Claude, but found that the company violated their rights by storing more than 7 million pirated books in a “central library” that would not necessarily be used for AI training.

A trial had been scheduled to begin in December to determine how much Anthropic owed for the alleged piracy, with potential damages running into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Anthropic agreed to the settlement last year. US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin is scheduled to hold a hearing on May 14 to decide whether to grant final approval.

As part of the settlement, law firms Susman Godfrey and Lieff Cabraser have requested 12.5 per cent of the settlement fund, or $187.5 million, in legal fees. The firms reduced their request after Alsup pushed back on the $300 million they initially sought in December.

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