A US District Judge in San Francisco approved a $1.5 billion settlement by AI developer Anthropic to compensate authors over copyright claims tied to pirated books used to train its chatbot Claude. The final approval came from Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín on July 20, 2026, concluding a lawsuit filed by authors alleging unauthorized use of their works in AI training [1, 2, 3].

The settlement is the largest known copyright recovery in history, according to authors’ lead lawyer Justin Nelson, who said, "We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible" [1]. Anthropic’s deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar added that more than 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement had claimed their payments so far, stating the company looks forward to bringing the matter to a close [1].

Authors received roughly $3,000 for each pirated book included in the lawsuit. The dispute arose after it was revealed that Anthropic stored over seven million pirated books in a central library to train Claude. In 2024, a group of authors sued Anthropic for copyright infringement, claiming unauthorized use of their books [1, 3].

In June 2025, Judge William Alsup ruled that training AI models on books qualified as fair use but found that Anthropic’s retention of the pirated books violated copyright laws. The case was set for a damages trial in December 2025 before the parties reached the settlement in September 2025, initially approved by retired Judge Alsup [1, 3].

The settlement class received diligent notice, with about 95% of eligible parties notified and only 350 authors opting out. Judge Martínez-Olguín reduced the lawyers’ fees from the requested 20% of the fund ($300 million) to less than 7%—about $101 million—to maximize payments to authors [2]. She said the high participation rate suggested most authors found the plan "fair" [2].

Anthropic still faces other lawsuits from authors arguing that $3,000 per book is insufficient compensation [3]. The next key date will be distribution of payments to claimants, expected to proceed promptly following the court’s approval.