Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Judge grants final approval of Anthropic's $1.5B copyright deal

Anthropic

A federal judge gave final approval on July 20 to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement of the Bartz class-action copyright suit, the largest known payout in a U.S. copyright case. The deal pays roughly $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 books that authors and publishers said Anthropic pirated to train its models, and more than 91% of covered rights-holders have already filed claims. The case followed last year's ruling by U.S. District Judge William Alsup that Anthropic had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books.