Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement gets final approval

Anthropic can begin paying authors and book publishers who sued the company after a federal judge gave final approval on July 20, 2026, to its $1.5 billion copyright settlement, Reuters reported.

Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California signed off on the agreement. Her predecessor, Judge William Alsup, had granted preliminary approval last year after finding that Anthropic illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books.

The settlement provides $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works, with payments shared among the authors and publishers that hold the rights. It is believed to be the largest settlement in U.S. copyright law history.

How Anthropic’s book collection led to the settlement

Alsup ruled that training an AI model on copyrighted text qualifies as fair use, a decision widely viewed as significant for the AI industry. But that ruling did not cover how Anthropic acquired the books used for training.

Recommended reading

Roscosmos tests AI for ISS crew reports

The company built its library from books it purchased and scanned, which the court considered lawful, as well as books downloaded from pirate sites including Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. Alsup found the latter practice independently illegal and said the piracy issue could proceed to trial. Anthropic settled soon afterward, avoiding a trial and the possibility of additional damages awarded by a jury.

The approval closes the case but does not resolve the copyright question for the industry. Alsup’s decision came from a single district court and, because Anthropic settled, the case will not reach an appeals court to establish binding precedent. Other judges remain free to rule differently based on their own facts.

Copyright lawsuits are also pending against Google, Meta, Midjourney, and OpenAI over the use of copyrighted works to train AI systems. Last week, publishers and authors including Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, Scott Turow, and S.C.R.I.B.E. filed a class action against Google, alleging that it used their copyrighted works to train Gemini.