Anthropics record copyright deal stalls over fee questions
A federal judge declined to finalize Anthropics $1.5 billion settlement with authors on Thursday, asking for more detail on attorney fees and payments to lead plaintiffs before signing off on what would be the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin probed lawyers on several unresolved issues during a May 14 hearing in San Francisco. That leaves about 120,000 authors and copyright holders waiting for resolution of a case thats been dragging on since 2024. The lawsuit accused Anthropic of downloading more than 7 million pirated books from shadow libraries LibGen and PiLiMi to train its models. Now-retired Judge William Alsup ruled in June 2025 that Anthropic‘s use of the books for AI training qualified as fair use, as long as the works were obtained legally. But he found that stockpiling pirated copies in a “central library” that went beyond training purposes wasn’t protected. That ruling set up a trial, originally scheduled for December 2025, where Anthropic faced potential damages in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Rather than go to trial, Anthropic agreed to the $1.5 billion settlement. Alsup preliminarily approved it in September 2025. The case was later reassigned to Martinez-Olguin after Alsup retired. Authors and publishers filed claims covering