Anthropic’s $1.5 Billion AI Copyright Settlement is Approved

A judge has signed off on the $1.5 billion settlement of a class action lawsuit against Anthropic for its misuse of their books to train their AI.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted the approval, the largest known settlement of a U.S. copyright case, and rejected claims that the settlement was too small.

The deal was initially approved in September 2025 by now-retired Judge William Alsup.

The lawsuit was launched in 2024 and said that Anthropic used books without permission to teach the artificial system, Claude.

The ruling was a bit mixed in that some of the use was ruled as fair use but the company was nailed for saving more than 7 million pirated books into a “central library.” A trial was scheduled for December.

Authors and other copyright holders filed claims covering over 92% of the more than 480,000 works included ​in the settlement, an attorney for the authors said during a court hearing.

Some authors believed the settlement was not large enough and that the attorneys were receiving too much from the settlement. The attorneys were receiving more than $101 million of their $187.5 million in their requested fees.

Separate lawsuits have been filed by authors who have opted out of the settlement.