Federal Judge Holds Back on Anthropic’s $1.5bn Author Settlement
May 15, 2026 – 9:15 am
Image by: Dario Amodei
A federal judge in San Francisco has withheld final approval of Anthropic’s proposed $1.5bn settlement with authors who claim the company trained its Claude models on pirated books. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, who took over the case from Judge William Alsup after a reassignment, requested more detail on counsel fees and lead-plaintiff payments before signing off.
The class action suit, led by thriller novelist Andrea Bartz and nonfiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, alleges Anthropic downloaded over seven million books from shadow libraries LibGen and Pirate Library Mirror to train its models. The settlement covers roughly 480,000 works, offering around $3,000 per work after fees—the largest known sum in a US copyright case.
Per a claims report filed in April, over 92% of eligible works have been registered for damages. Class counsel had initially requested a 15% fee on the settlement fund, reduced to 12.5%, plus $3m in expenses, an $18.22m cost reserve, and $50,000 service awards for each lead plaintiff. The court sought clarification on these points.
Objections to the settlement have arisen from various angles. Some argue the settlement is too small for the alleged violations. Others question the notice campaign, claiming it encouraged class members to file claims instead of opting out. Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel raised concerns about lacking Spanish-language notice, while indie author Victoria Pinder objected to authors receiving only one share per group copyright registration rather than per book.
The legal framework for the settlement follows Judge Alsup’s ruling last June that training on legitimately acquired books is fair use due to its ‘exceedingly transformative’ nature. However, building a ‘central library’ from pirated copies was deemed unfair. This ruling, along with class certification, prompted Anthropic to negotiate the settlement.
The timing of the settlement is significant for Anthropic, which is currently in talks to raise $30bn at a $900bn valuation and recently secured a $1.5bn private equity pipeline with Wall Street partners. The book payout equates to the company’s largest strategic deal to date, representing a substantial one-time charge against its high-valuation investors.