Context: On various occasions, most recently last month, we wrote that a settlement between AI maker Anthropic, which is backed by Amazon and Google, and book authors asserting their copyrights would make sense. And two weeks ago it turned out that Senior United States District Judge William H. Alsup was getting angry over what he considered to be misrepresentations (August 11, 2025 ai fray article). He then wrote that if Anthropic lost big, it would be because of the scale of its wrongdoing. Anthropic was trying to avoid a trial scheduled for December 2025 with the help of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (July 15, 2025 ai fray article).
What’s new: On behalf of the class action and the defendant, Susman Godfrey partner Justin Nelson just notified Judge Alsup of a settlement. The parties ask the court to stay the proceedings. The filing does not disclose the amount, but this must be a big deal. Anthropic itself told the court its liability could theoretically reach $750 billion (April 19, 2025 ai fray article).
Direct impact: Such settlements must be approved by the court, but Judge Alsup previously urged the parties to settle (May 23, 2025 ai fray article). Unless there is anything outrageously unfair about the settlement terms (which appears highly unlikely), he will bless the deal. Anthropic actually obtained summary judgment with respect to LLM training, but the use of a library of pirated works was unforgivable in Judge Alsup’s view (June 24, 2025 ai fray article).
Wider ramifications:
- This is the world’s first major AI copyright settlement.
- The use of pirated works is at issue in other cases, and in several of them Mr. Nelson is also repesenting class-action plaintiffs.
- There is a striking parallel between the $800 million Dominion v. Fox News settlement (April 19, 2023 AP newspiece) and Bartz v. Anthropic. In the former case, the presiding judge praised Mr. Nelson for the best lawyering he had ever seen (April 18, 2023 New Yorker article). In the latter, Judge Alsup, who is notoriously difficult to please, gave Mr. Nelson “an A plus” for how he summarized the case (April 4, 2025 ai fray article).
Here’s the settlement notice, which is historic among 40+ AI copyright cases in the U.S. alone (plus there is litigation in other jurisdictions around the globe):
It would be tempting to speculate about the amount of the settlement, but the number will become known in due course as the settlement agreement must be submitted to the court.
The notice mentions that mediation was helpful.
We reached out to Mr. Nelson, who provided the following statement:
This historic settlement will benefit all class members. We look forward to announcing details of the settlement in the coming weeks.