Anthropic’s $1.5 billion book piracy settlement approved by judge

The $3,000 per book payment could be the ‘largest known copyright recovery in history.’

A federal judge has signed off on Anthropic’s $1.5 billion class action settlement with authors who accused the company of training its AI models on copyrighted books, as reported earlier by Reuters . In an order on Monday , Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín writes that the settlement will provide “meaningful relief,” offering authors around $3,000 for each book allegedly pirated by Anthropic.

The $1.5 billion settlement is the “largest known copyright recovery in history,” according to the law firm representing the plaintiffs . A group of authors — Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson — first filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic in 2024. While the now-retired Judge William Alsup granted Anthropic a partial victory last year, he approved a separate class action lawsuit claiming the company engaged in the “Napster-style downloading of millions of works.” Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement in September 2025, to which Judge Alsup later granted preliminary approval .

“We are pleased that more than 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the payment,” Anthropic general counsel Aparna Sridhar tells Reuters . “We’re looking forward ​to bringing this matter to a close.” Anthropic is still facing copyright lawsuits from Chicken Soup for the Soul and several other authors who argue that $3,000 per book isn’t enough.