Judge Delays Preliminary Approval in Anthropic Copyright Settlement; Publishers Weekly, September 9, 2025

 Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly; Judge Delays Preliminary Approval in Anthropic Copyright Settlement

"Alsup signaled his discomfort with the proposal in a filing released the evening before the September 8 hearing, writing that he was “disappointed” that attorneys representing the author plaintiffs had left “important questions to be answered in the future, including respecting the Works List, Class List, Claim Form." He was especially concerned for works with multiple claimants with regards to the notification process, voicing worry over what would happen if one party wanted to opt-out of the settlement and the other did not...

In a statement, Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said the Guild was “confused” by the court’s suggestion that the Guild and AAP were working behind the scenes in ways that could pressure authors to accept the settlement “when that is precisely the opposite of our proposed role as informational advisors to the working group.”

The goal of the working group, which had been proposed by lawyers for the class, “is to ensure that authors’ interests are fully represented and to bring our expertise... to the discussions with complete transparency,” Rasenberger continued. “There are industry norms that we want to make sure are accounted for.”...

AAP CEO Maria Pallante offered an even more vigorous explanation of AAP’s role, as well as the role of the Guild, in the proceedings. “The Association of American Publishers and the Authors’ Guild are not-for-profits that have worked hard to support counsel in the case and to make sure that authors and publishers have the information they need,” Pallante said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Court today demonstrated a lack of understanding of how the publishing industry works.”"

Class-Wide Relief:The Sleeping Bear of AI Litigation Is Starting to Wake Up; Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal, October 2025

Anna B. Naydonov, Mark Davies and Jules Lee, Intellectual Property &Technology Law Journal; Class-Wide Relief:The Sleeping Bear of AI Litigation Is Starting to Wake Up

"Probably no intellectual property (IP) topic in the last several years has gotten more attention than the litigation over the use of the claimed copyrighted content in training artificial intelligence (AI) models.The issue of whether fair use applies to save the day for AI developers is rightfully deemed critical, if not existential, for AI innovation. But whether class relief – and the astronomical damages that may come with it – is available in these cases is a question of no less significance."

Anthropic settles with authors in first-of-its-kind AI copyright infringement lawsuit; NPR, September 5, 2025

 Chloe Veltman , NPR; Anthropic settles with authors in first-of-its-kind AI copyright infringement lawsuit

"In one of the largest copyright settlements involving generative artificial intelligence, Anthropic AI, a leading company in the generative AI space, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a group of authors.

If the court approves the settlement, Anthropic will compensate authors around $3,000 for each of the estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement.

The settlement, which U.S. Senior District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco will consider approving next week, is in a case that involved the first substantive decision on how fair use applies to generative AI systems. It also suggests an inflection point in the ongoing legal fights between the creative industries and the AI companies accused of illegally using artistic works to train the large language models that underpin their widely-used AI systems.

The fair use doctrine enables copyrighted works to be used by third parties without the copyright holder's consent in some circumstances, such as when illustrating a point in a news article. AI companies trying to make the case for the use of copyrighted works to train their generative AI models commonly invoke fair use. But authors and other creative industry plaintiffs have been pushing back.

"This landmark settlement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history," the settlement motion states, arguing that it will "provide meaningful compensation" to authors and "set a precedent of AI companies paying for their use of pirated websites."

"This settlement marks the beginning of a necessary evolution toward a legitimate, market-based licensing scheme for training data," said Cecilia Ziniti, a tech industry lawyer and former Ninth Circuit clerk who is not involved in this specific case but has been following it closely. "It's not the end of AI, but the start of a more mature, sustainable ecosystem where creators are compensated, much like how the music industry adapted to digital distribution.""

Anthropic’s settlement with authors may be the ‘first domino to fall’ in AI copyright battles; Fortune, August 27, 2025

BEATRICE NOLAN, Fortune; Anthropic’s settlement with authors may be the ‘first domino to fall’ in AI copyright battles

"The amount of the settlement was not immediately disclosed, but legal experts not involved in the case said the figure could easily reach into the hundreds of millions. It’s also still unclear how the settlement will be distributed among various copyright holders, which could include large publishing houses as well as individual authors.

The case was the first certified class action against an AI company over the use of copyrighted materials, and the quick settlement, which came just one month after the judge ruled the case could proceed to trial as a class action, is a win for the authors, according to legal experts."

Anthropic Settles High-Profile AI Copyright Lawsuit Brought by Book Authors; Wired, August 26, 2025

Kate Knobs, Wired ; Anthropic Settles High-Profile AI Copyright Lawsuit Brought by Book Authors

"ANTHROPIC HAS REACHED a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by a group of prominent authors, marking a major turn in one of the most significant ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in history. The move will allow Anthropic to avoid what could have been a financially devastating outcome in court."

Anthropic’s surprise settlement adds new wrinkle in AI copyright war; Reuters, August 27, 2025

 Blake Brittain, Reuters; Anthropic’s surprise settlement adds new wrinkle in AI copyright war

"Anthropic's class action settlement with a group of U.S. authors this week was a first, but legal experts said the case's distinct qualities complicate the deal's potential influence on a wave of ongoing copyright lawsuits against other artificial-intelligence focused companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms.

Amazon-backed Anthropic was under particular pressure, with a trial looming in December after a judge found it liable for pirating millions of copyrighted books. The terms of the settlement, which require a judge's approval, are not yet public. And U.S. courts have just begun to wrestle with novel copyright questions related to generative AI, which could prompt other defendants to hold out for favorable rulings."

Who owns the copyright for AI work?; Financial Times, August 24, 2025

 BARRY SCANNELL, Financial Times; Who owns the copyright for AI work?

"Generative artificial intelligence poses two copyright puzzles. The first is the widely discussed question of compensation for work used to train AI models. The second, which has yet to receive as much attention, concerns the work that AI produces. Copyright is granted to authors. So what happens to work that has no human author?"

Judge rejects Anthropic bid to appeal copyright ruling, postpone trial; Reuters, August 12, 2025

Blake Brittain , Reuters; Judge rejects Anthropic bid to appeal copyright ruling, postpone trial

"A federal judge in California has denied a request from Anthropic to immediately appeal a ruling that could place the artificial intelligence company on the hook for billions of dollars in damages for allegedly pirating authors' copyrighted books.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said on Monday that Anthropic must wait until after a scheduled December jury trial to appeal his decision that the company is not shielded from liability for pirating millions of books to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude."

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson slams AI firms for stealing copyrighted material like Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’; New York Post, August 6, 2025

Ariel Zilber, New York Post ; News Corp CEO Robert Thomson slams AI firms for stealing copyrighted material like Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’

"The media executive said the voracious appetite of the AI firms to train their bots on proprietary content without paying for it risks eroding America’s edge over rival nations.

“Much is made of the competition with China, but America’s advantage is ingenuity and creativity, not bits and bytes, not watts but wit,” he said.

“To undermine that comparative advantage by stripping away IP rights is to vandalize our virtuosity.”"

AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified; Ars Technica, August 8, 2025

ASHLEY BELANGER, Ars Technica ; AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

"AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

Last week, Anthropic petitioned to appeal the class certification, urging the court to weigh questions that the district court judge, William Alsup, seemingly did not. Alsup allegedly failed to conduct a "rigorous analysis" of the potential class and instead based his judgment on his "50 years" of experience, Anthropic said.

If the appeals court denies the petition, Anthropic argued, the emerging company may be doomed. As Anthropic argued, it now "faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months" based on a class certification rushed at "warp speed" that involves "up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history," each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine.

Confronted with such extreme potential damages, Anthropic may lose its rights to raise valid defenses of its AI training, deciding it would be more prudent to settle, the company argued. And that could set an alarming precedent, considering all the other lawsuits generative AI (GenAI) companies face over training on copyrighted materials, Anthropic argued."

Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says; Ars Technica, July 28, 2025

 ASHLEY BELANGER  , Ars Technica; Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says

"Porn sites may have blown up Meta's key defense in a copyright fight with book authors who earlier this year said that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries" to train its AI models.

Meta has defeated most of the authors' claims and claimed there is no proof that Meta ever uploaded pirated data through seeding or leeching on the BitTorrent network used to download training data. But authors still have a chance to prove that Meta may have profited off its massive piracy, and a new lawsuit filed by adult sites last week appears to contain evidence that could help authors win their fight, TorrentFreak reported.

The new lawsuit was filed last Friday in a US district court in California by Strike 3 Holdings—which says it attracts "over 25 million monthly visitors" to sites that serve as "ethical sources" for adult videos that "are famous for redefining adult content with Hollywood style and quality."

After authors revealed Meta's torrenting, Strike 3 Holdings checked its proprietary BitTorrent-tracking tools designed to detect infringement of its videos and alleged that the company found evidence that Meta has been torrenting and seeding its copyrighted content for years—since at least 2018. Some of the IP addresses were clearly registered to Meta, while others appeared to be "hidden," and at least one was linked to a Meta employee, the filing said."

Judge Rules Class Action Suit Against Anthropic Can Proceed; Publishers Weekly, July 18, 2025

Jim Milliot , Publishers Weekly; Judge Rules Class Action Suit Against Anthropic Can Proceed

"In a major victory for authors, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled July 17 that three writers suing Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent all other authors whose books the AI company allegedly pirated to train its AI model as part of a class action lawsuit.

In late June, Alsup of the Northern District of California, ruled in Bartz v. Anthropic that the AI company's training of its Claude LLMs on authors' works was "exceedingly transformative," and therefore protected by fair use. However, Alsup also determined that the company's practice of downloading pirated books from sites including Books3, Library Genesis, and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) to build a permanent digital library was not covered by fair use.

Alsup’s most recent ruling follows an amended complaint from the authors looking to certify classes of copyright owners in a “Pirated Books Class” and in a “Scanned Books Class.” In his decision, Alsup certified only a LibGen and PiLiMi Pirated Books Class, writing that “this class is limited to actual or beneficial owners of timely registered copyrights in ISBN/ASIN-bearing books downloaded by Anthropic from these two pirate libraries.”

Alsup stressed that “the class is not limited to authors or author-like entities,” explaining that “a key point is to cover everyone who owns the specific copyright interest in play, the right to make copies, either as the actual or as the beneficial owner.” Later in his decision, Alsup makes it clear who is covered by the ruling: “A beneficial owner...is someone like an author who receives royalties from any publisher’s revenues or recoveries from the right to make copies. Yes, the legal owner might be the publisher but the author has a definite stake in the royalties, so the author has standing to sue. And, each stands to benefit from the copyright enforcement at the core of our case however they then divide the benefit.”"

US authors suing Anthropic can band together in copyright class action, judge rules; Reuters, July 17, 2025

Blake Brittain , Reuters; US authors suing Anthropic can band together in copyright class action, judge rules

"A California federal judge ruled on Thursday that three authors suing artificial intelligence startup Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent writers nationwide whose books Anthropic allegedly pirated to train its AI system.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the authors can bring a class action on behalf of all U.S. writers whose works Anthropic allegedly downloaded from "pirate libraries" LibGen and PiLiMi to create a repository of millions of books in 2021 and 2022."

Libraries Pay More for E-Books. Some States Want to Change That.; The New York Times, July 16, 2025

Erik Ofgang, The New York Times; Libraries Pay More for E-Books. Some States Want to Change That.

Proposed legislation would pressure publishers to adjust borrowing limits and find other ways to widen access. 

"Librarians complain that publishers charge so much to license e-books that it’s busting library budgets and frustrating efforts to provide equitable access to reading materials. Big publishers and many authors say that e-book library access undermines their already struggling business models. Smaller presses are split."

What Book Authors’ AI Copyright Court Losses Mean for the Music Business; Billboard, 7/14/25

RACHEL SCHARF, Billboard ; What Book Authors’ AI Copyright Court Losses Mean for the Music Business

While the first copyright rulings have come out on the side of AI platforms, this is hardly a death knell for the music giants' lawsuits against Suno, Udio and Anthropic, legal experts say. 

Why the new rulings on AI copyright might actually be good news for publishers; Fast Company, July 9, 2025

PETE PACHAL, Fast Company; Why the new rulings on AI copyright might actually be good news for publishers

"The outcomes of both cases were more mixed than the headlines suggest, and they are also deeply instructive. Far from closing the door on copyright holders, they point to places where litigants might find a key...

Taken together, the three cases point to a clearer path forward for publishers building copyright cases against Big AI:

Focus on outputs instead of inputs: It’s not enough that someone hoovered up your work. To build a solid case, you need to show that what the AI company did with it reproduced it in some form. So far, no court has definitively decided whether AI outputs are meaningfully different enough to count as “transformative” in the eyes of copyright law, but it should be noted that courts have ruled in the past that copyright violation can occur even when small parts of the work are copied—ifthose parts represent the “heart” of the original.

Show market harm: This looks increasingly like the main battle. Now that we have a lot of data on how AI search engines and chatbots—which, to be clear, are outputs—are affecting the online behavior of news consumers, the case that an AI service harms the media market is easier to make than it was a year ago. In addition, the emergence of licensing deals between publishers and AI companies is evidence that there’s market harm by creating outputs without offering such a deal.

Question source legitimacy: Was the content legally acquired or pirated? The Anthropic case opens this up as a possible attack vector for publishers. If they can prove scraping occurred through paywalls—without subscribing first—that could be a violation even absent any outputs."

U.S. Copyright Office Announces Webinar on Copyright Essentials for Writers; U.S. Copyright Office, Webinar: August 6, 2025 1 PM EDT

 U.S. Copyright Office; U.S. Copyright Office Announces Webinar on Copyright Essentials for Writers

"The U.S. Copyright Office invites you to register to attend the third session in our Copyright Essentials webinar series. The Plot Thickens: Copyright Essentials for Writers will take place on August 6 at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. 

In this session, the Copyright Office will discuss what writers should know about copyright. We will cover information for writers of various literary works—from novels and blogs to poetry, cookbooks, textbooks, and more. The session will also review suitable application options and how our Public Information Office can help you along the way. 

Attendees will also learn copyright basics, answers to commonly asked questions, and where to find Copyright Office educational resources.

Speakers:

• Jessica Chinnadurai, Attorney-Advisor, Office of Public Information and Education
• Laura Kaiser, Attorney-Advisor, Office of Public Information and Education

Prior Copyright Essentials webinars can be viewed on our website:

• Copyright Essentials: Myths Explained
• Copyright Essentials: Myths Explained September 2024 Update
• Creativity in Focus: Copyright Essentials for Visual Artists and Photographers
• Find Your Voice: Copyright Essentials for Musicians

The Copyright Office strategic goal of Copyright for All means making the copyright system as understandable and accessible to as many members of the public as possible, through initiatives including education and outreach. Sign up to stay updated about future webinars in this series."

The Court Battles That Will Decide if Silicon Valley Can Plunder Your Work; Slate, June 30, 2025

 BY NITISH PAHWA , Slate; The Court Battles That Will Decide if Silicon Valley Can Plunder Your Work

"Last week, two different federal judges in the Northern District of California made legal rulings that attempt to resolve one of the knottiest debates in the artificial intelligence world: whether it’s a copyright violation for Big Tech firms to use published books for training generative bots like ChatGPT. Unfortunately for the many authors who’ve brought lawsuits with this argument, neither decision favors their case—at least, not for now. And that means creators in all fields may not be able to stop A.I. companies from using their work however they please...

What if these copyright battles are also lost? Then there will be little in the way of stopping A.I. startups from utilizing all creative works for their own purposes, with no consideration as to the artists and writers who actually put in the work. And we will have a world blessed less with human creativity than one overrun by second-rate slop that crushes the careers of the people whose imaginations made that A.I. so potent to begin with."

An AI firm won a lawsuit for copyright infringement — but may face a huge bill for piracy; Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2025

 Michael Hiltzik , Los Angeles Times; An AI firm won a lawsuit for copyright infringement — but may face a huge bill for piracy

[Kip Currier: Excellent informative overview of some of the principal issues, players, stakes, and recent decisions in the ongoing AI copyright legal battles. Definitely worth 5-10 minutes of your time to read and reflect on.

A key take-away, derived from Judge Vince Chhabria's decision in last week's Meta win, is that:

Artists and authors can win their copyright infringement cases if they produce evidence showing the bots are affecting their market. Chhabria all but pleaded for the plaintiffs to bring some such evidence before him: 

“It’s hard to imagine that it can be fair use to use copyrighted books...to make billions or trillions of dollars while enabling the creation of a potentially endless stream of competing works that could significantly harm the market for those books.” 

But “the plaintiffs never so much as mentioned it,” he lamented.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-06-27/an-ai-firm-won-a-lawsuit-over-copyright-infringement-but-may-face-a-huge-bill-for-piracy]

[Excerpt]

"Anthropic had to acknowledge a troubling qualification in Alsup’s order, however. Although he found for the company on the copyright issue, he also noted that it had downloaded copies of more than 7 million books from online “shadow libraries,” which included countless copyrighted works, without permission. 

That action was “inherently, irredeemably infringing,” Alsup concluded. “We will have a trial on the pirated copies...and the resulting damages,” he advised Anthropic ominously: Piracy on that scale could expose the company to judgments worth untold millions of dollars...

“Neither case is going to be the last word” in the battle between copyright holders and AI developers, says Aaron Moss, a Los Angeles attorney specializing in copyright law. With more than 40 lawsuits on court dockets around the country, he told me, “it’s too early to declare that either side is going to win the ultimate battle.”...

With billions of dollars, even trillions, at stake for AI developers and the artistic community at stake, no one expects the law to be resolved until the issue reaches the Supreme Court, presumably years from now...

But Anthropic also downloaded copies of more than 7 million books from online “shadow libraries,” which include untold copyrighted works without permission. 

Alsup wrote that Anthropic “could have purchased books, but it preferred to steal them to avoid ‘legal/practice/business slog,’” Alsup wrote. (He was quoting Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei.)...

Artists and authors can win their copyright infringement cases if they produce evidence showing the bots are affecting their market."...

The truth is that the AI camp is just trying to get out of paying for something instead of getting it for free. Never mind the trillions of dollars in revenue they say they expect over the next decade — they claim that licensing will be so expensive it will stop the march of this supposedly historic technology dead in its tracks.

Chhabria aptly called this argument “nonsense.” If using books for training is as valuable as the AI firms say they are, he noted, then surely a market for book licensing will emerge. That is, it will — if the courts don’t give the firms the right to use stolen works without compensation."

Judge dismisses authors’ copyright lawsuit against Meta over AI training; AP, June 25, 2025

 MATT O’BRIEN AND BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP; Judge dismisses authors’ copyright lawsuit against Meta over AI training

"Although Meta prevailed in its request to dismiss the case, it could turn out to be a pyrrhic victory. In his 40-page ruling, Chhabria repeatedly indicated reasons to believe that Meta and other AI companies have turned into serial copyright infringers as they train their technology on books and other works created by humans, and seemed to be inviting other authors to bring cases to his court presented in a manner that would allow them to proceed to trial.

The judge scoffed at arguments that requiring AI companies to adhere to decades-old copyright laws would slow down advances in a crucial technology at a pivotal time. “These products are expected to generate billions, even trillions of dollars for the companies that are developing them. If using copyrighted works to train the models is as necessary as the companies say, they will figure out a way to compensate copyright holders for it.”