Anthropic’s landmark $1.5B copyright settlement is approved

5:12 PM PDT · July 20, 2026

Anthropic can finally start cutting checks to a group of authors and book publishers that sued the AI lab over copyright infringement. A federal judge gave final approval Monday of Anthropic’s landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a class action copyright lawsuit, Reuters reported.

Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a preliminary approval of the settlement last year, after ruling that Anthropic had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books.

Alsup has since retired and Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin signed off on the settlement on Monday.

The payout will deliver $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works, shared among the authors and publishers who hold rights to them. While the settlement is believed to be the largest in the history of U.S. copyright law,many authors and creators still don’t view it as...

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