Anthropic AI Copyright Settlement: Covered Books, Payouts, and Deadlines

The Anthropic AI copyright settlement is a $1.5 billion class action deal that pays roughly $3,000 per book to authors and publishers whose copyrighted titles were downloaded from pirate websites and used to train the company’s Claude language models. Filed in August 2024 and preliminarily approved in September 2025, it is the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. A final fairness hearing was held on May 14, 2026, and payouts are expected to begin after the court signs off, with the earliest estimated payment date around August 10, 2026.¹

What Anthropic Did

The lawsuit, brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Kirk Wallace Johnson, and Charles Graeber in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleged that Anthropic knowingly built its training data from pirated books.² The complaint identified three specific hauls: about 196,640 books downloaded from a pirate tracker called Bibliotik in early 2021, at least five million from Library Genesis (LibGen) in June 2021, and at least two million more from the Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) in July 2022.³

In June 2025, Judge William Alsup ruled that training an AI model on lawfully purchased books was fair use, but downloading from pirate libraries was not. “There is no carveout from the Copyright Act for AI companies,” his order stated.³ With statutory damages of up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work and nearly half a million eligible titles in the certified class, Anthropic faced potential liability well above $70 billion.⁴ The company settled.

Which Books Are Covered

The settlement covers books Anthropic downloaded from LibGen or PiLiMi before August 25, 2025. To qualify, a work must:

Have an ISBN or ASIN,
Be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office within five years of publication, and
Be registered either before Anthropic downloaded it or within three months of publication.⁵

Books downloaded from the Bibliotik/”Books3″ dataset are not included; Judge Alsup denied class certification for that group because the metadata was too incomplete to reliably identify titles and authors. A proposed “Scanned Books” class was also denied.⁵

After applying the registration filter, the final works list came to approximately 482,460 eligible titles.⁶ You can look up a specific title through the official claims site at AnthropicCopyrightSettlement.com, administered by JND Legal Administration.⁷

A gap in the class definition affected authors whose publishers failed to register copyrights on time — something those authors could not have controlled. Macmillan publicly committed to paying affected authors what they would have received under the settlement. The Authors Guild said it hoped other publishers would follow, but as of early 2026, none had publicly done so.⁸

How Much Each Book Pays

Every eligible title receives the same base payment. With roughly 500,000 works in the class, the initial projection was about $3,000 per title, though the final figure depends on how many claims are actually filed and how much interest the fund earns before distribution. If total eligible works turn out to exceed 500,000, Anthropic must add another $3,000 for each extra title.⁹

Because not every rightsholder files, the effective per-book payout is running higher than the initial estimate. The Authors Alliance calculated that if all 482,460 eligible works were claimed, sole rightsholders would receive about $2,446 per work after fees and costs (or about $1,223 per side under a 50/50 split). With claims closer to 95,000 as of December 2025, the projected payout climbed above $12,400 for sole rightsholders.⁶ The Authors Guild later reported that 91% of eligible books had been claimed.¹⁰

How Authors and Publishers Divide the Payment

For most books, the payment is split between the author and the publisher. Trade and university press titles use a default 50/50 split. Self-published authors, and authors whose rights have reverted to them, get 100%. When multiple authors or multiple publishers share one side of the split, they divide that side equally unless their contracts say otherwise.¹¹

Educational and professional books have no default split. The division follows the specific contract, and claimants are asked to make a good-faith representation of the correct percentage. If the author and publisher disagree, a special master (attorney Theodore K. Cheng) resolves the dispute.¹¹¹² Law professor Lea Bishop objected that publishers were using this arbitration process to claim up to 88% of the payout on scholarly and educational works, and raised concerns about the special master’s professional history representing publishers. The court denied Bishop’s request to speak at the fairness hearing, ruling she lacked standing because she was not a class member.⁸

When Payments Arrive

Anthropic pays the $1.5 billion in four installments:

$300 million by October 2, 2025
$300 million within one week of final approval (originally scheduled for May 14, 2026)
$450 million by September 25, 2026
$450 million by September 25, 2027¹¹

Class members will not receive checks until final approval is granted and any appeals resolved. The settlement site gives an earliest estimated payout date around August 10, 2026.¹³

Attorney fees will come out of the fund. Class counsel initially sought 25% ($375 million) and later reduced the request to 12.5%, or $187.5 million.¹⁴

Key Deadlines

The main dates for class members:

Claims deadline: March 30, 2026.⁷
Opt-out deadline: January 29, 2026 (extended from January 7, 2026).¹²
Fairness hearing: May 14, 2026, before Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, who took over the case after Judge Alsup retired in December 2025.¹²

Opt-outs were unusually low for a settlement this size: about 350 class members opted out, representing less than 0.5% of the eligible works. Forty-one formal objections were filed, 32 from class members.⁸

What the Settlement Does Not Cover

Several categories of claim are left out, and it’s worth knowing where the release stops:

It grants Anthropic no license or permission for future AI training.
It does not release claims based on potentially infringing outputs generated by Claude.
It does not cover works that are not on the settlement works list — including books that failed the copyright registration requirements and most works by non-U.S. authors that lack U.S. registration.
It does not cover any claims arising after August 25, 2025.⁹

Anthropic also agreed to destroy the original pirated files and any derivative copies, and certified that it did not use LibGen or PiLiMi materials in any of its commercial models.⁹

Where the Case Stands Now

At the May 14, 2026 fairness hearing, Judge Martínez-Olguín did not rule from the bench. She ordered Anthropic to file a supplemental brief by May 21 addressing a handful of late opt-out requests and stated that no further submissions from objectors would be considered.¹⁵ Observers described the hearing as largely uneventful and expected approval to follow.¹⁶

As of mid-2026, final approval is pending. If you believe one of your books qualifies and you haven’t yet filed, the claims window has closed, but the settlement site remains the authoritative source for status updates on distribution and any late-claim procedures.⁷

1
Anthropic Copyright Settlement. Important Dates
2
CourtListener. Bartz v. Anthropic PBC
3
Copyright Alliance. Bartz v. Anthropic Order
4
ChatGPT Is Eating the World. Anthropic Faces Potential Business-Ending Liability in Statutory Damages
5
Justia. Bartz v. Anthropic, Order on Class Certification
6
Authors Alliance. Back of the Envelope Math on What Payouts We May See in the Bartz v. Anthropic Settlement
7
Anthropic Copyright Settlement. Anthropic Copyright Settlement
8
Writer Beware. Anthropic Copyright Settlement April Update
9
Susman Godfrey. Susman Godfrey Secures $1.5 Billion Settlement in Landmark AI Piracy Case
10
Authors Guild. Anthropic Settlement Update: 91 Percent of Books Claimed
11
Authors Guild. What Authors Need to Know About the Anthropic Settlement
12
Writer Beware. The Anthropic Class Action Settlement: What You Need to Know Right Now
13
Anthropic Copyright Settlement. FAQ
14
Bloomberg Law. Authors’ Lawyers Lower Fees Ask in Anthropic Pact Approval Bid
15
Publishers Weekly. Little Drama at Anthropic’s Settlement Hearing
16
Publishing Perspectives. Anthropic Settlement Appears to Cruise Through Its Final Fairness Hearing