United States of America: Anthropic reached a USD 1.5 billion settlement in a class action lawsuit addressing allegations that it used copyrighted books to train its AI model (Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC) (No. C 24-05417 WHA)

On 5 September 2025, Anthropic reached a USD 1.5 billion settlement in the class action lawsuit alleging that it downloaded books from the databases Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror to train its large language models. As part of the settlement, Anthropic agreed to destroy the copies used in the training process. If approved by the court, the settlement would provide an estimated USD 3’000 per work for approximately 500’000 works. The release covers only past claims through 25 August 2025 and does not include claims related to AI-generated outputs or conduct after that date. Anthropic will destroy the datasets after final judgment, subject to any court-ordered preservation requirements. The settlement includes a notice and administration plan managed by JND Legal to inform class members and facilitate participation, in accordance with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23.