Class Action
Bartz v. Anthropic
Re-checked against the docket 2026-08-23
Bartz, Graeber & Johnson v. Anthropic PBC
Where it stands
Judge William Alsup's June 2025 order held that training on lawfully acquired books was fair use but that building a library from pirated copies was not, exposing Anthropic to statutory damages across roughly 500,000 works. The parties settled for $1.5 billion. Judge Alsup retired at the end of 2025 and the case was reassigned; final approval was granted by Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin on July 20, 2026, with class counsel's fee cut to $101,561,111 from the $187.5 million sought. Claims rate was reported at 91.3% as of mid-April 2026.
Key ruling
June 2025 (N.D. Cal., Alsup, J.): training an LLM on lawfully purchased books is 'exceedingly transformative' fair use, but retaining a library of pirated copies is not — the ruling that produced the largest copyright settlement on record.
The record
- Court
- N.D. Cal.
- Case number
- 3:24-cv-05417
- Filed
- 2024-08-19
- Defendants
- Anthropic PBC
- Plaintiffs
- Certified class of authors and rightsholders whose books Anthropic downloaded from the pirate libraries LibGen and PiLiMi (Pirate Library Mirror)
- Technology at issue
- Claude / Anthropic large language models
- Relief sought
- Statutory damages for willful infringement arising from acquisition and retention of pirated books
- Settlement
- $1.5 billion, plus interest — approximately $3,000 per work across a 482,460-work list
Claims pleaded
Sources (4)
- Court Grants Final Approval of $1.5 Billion Anthropic Copyright SettlementThe Authors Guild · 2026-07-20
- Bartz v. Anthropic: Settlement reached after landmark summary judgment and class certificationNorton Rose Fulbright (Inside Tech Law) · 2025-09-02
- Judge approves record $1.5 billion AI copyright settlement involving AnthropicJURIST · 2026-07-21
- Federal court approves $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright settlementPearl Cohen · 2026-07
This page describes a publicly filed case. This site is not counsel on this matter, nothing here is legal advice, and the allegations described are allegations unless a court has said otherwise.