Dario Amodei, co-founder and chief executive officer of Anthropic, on the World Economic Forum in 2025.
Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A federal judge on Thursday preliminarily approved Anthropic’s offer to pay $1.5 billion to settle a category motion lawsuit with a bunch of authors, in what shall be the most important publicly reported copyright recovery in history.
The lawsuit, filed within the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was brought last 12 months by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson. It alleged that Anthropic illegally downloaded books from pirated databases like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.
“We’re grateful for the Court’s motion today, which brings us one step closer to real accountability for Anthropic and puts all AI corporations on notice they cannot shortcut the law or override creators’ rights,” the authors said in a joint statement Thursday.
Anthropic didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment.
The startup was founded by former OpenAI research executives, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in 2021. Anthropic, which is valued at $183 billion, is best known for its AI assistant Claude.
AI startups and media corporations have been closely following this lawsuit against Anthropic as they work to stipulate what copyright infringement means within the AI era.
Anthropic initially proposed the $1.5 billion settlement earlier this month. The corporate said it might pay roughly $3,000 per book plus interest, and it agreed to destroy the datasets containing the allegedly pirated material.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup initially expressed some reservations about Anthropic’s offer, including concerns over the way to ensure authors could be properly informed. Alsup ultimately approved the settlement after “several weeks of rigorous assessment and review,” in keeping with a release.
Alsup will consider final approval of the settlement once the notice and claims processes are complete, the discharge said.
Aparna Sridhar, Anthropic’s deputy general counsel, said in an announcement that the corporate is pleased with the determination, and that the settlement “simply resolves narrow claims about how certain materials were obtained.”
“The choice will allow us to concentrate on developing protected AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems,” Sridhar said.
WATCH: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5 billion to settle writer’s class motion lawsuit over AI training
