In an exclusive interview with ai fray, Justin Nelson of Susman Godfrey discussed the $1.5 billion settlement Bartz v. Anthropic copyright class action settlement that he was lead counsel for (on the plaintiff side), including why he decided to get involved in the case, the precedents it will set, and how authors can understand whether they are class members or not.
The Bartz v. Anthropic settlement was first announced two months ago (August 26, 2025 ai fray article), although Judge William H. Alsup of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted preliminary approval of the settlement in September (September 25, 2025 ai fray article), before setting out his reasoning in a memorandum issued on Friday (October 17, 2025 Northern District of California opinion).
The deal, if approved, would not only be the largest-ever copyright settlement, but also the largest copyright recovery in known history (including trial, settlement, class action, etc.). According to Mr. Nelson, there was a lot of risk involved, and there still is, given that final approval has not yet occurred. A final approval hearing will not take place before Q2 2026.
If approved, class members will then get paid a few months after that. To find out how to get paid, authors and publishers can go to this website: www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com. Mr. Nelson expanded on this in the interview.
The interview also spanned issues related to patent litigation too, as he often also represents patentees in that space, as well as some highlights from his career (details of which can be found in a separate article on ip fray).
Mr. Nelson’s track record includes multi-million dollar settlements between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox ($787.5 million), as well as a $64.5 million win for Green Mountain against Ardagh, and a $38 million judgment for Fractus (a case that later settled on appeal). In Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox (one of his biggest cases to date), a Delaware judge said about his practice: “this is the best lawyering I’ve had, ever”.Here is a link to the full interview on ai fray:
In case of interest, here is a link to the full interview on ip fray: