U.S. Judge Approves Anthropic’s $1.5 Billion Settlement with Book Authors

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin today approved Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with book authors whose content the AI maker stole.

“The Court hereby grants the motion for final approval, and grants in part the motion for attorney’s fees,” Judge Martinez-Olguin writes in the ruling, referring to the controversially high fees lawyers were set to receive for their minor roles in this fiasco. “The $1.5 billion Settlement provides substantial benefits to the Class in light of the novel claims asserted. Success at trial was not assured, and a loss would have left the Class with no recourse.”

Anthropic originally agreed to settle the class action lawsuit in September 2025 because internal emails showed that the firm had knowingly and willfully stolen the content from books written by over 5,000 authors. But Judge William Alsup rejected the settlement because of the unfair fees lawyers wrote into it. The final ruling awards $101 million in fees for the lawyers, far less than the $187.5 million they had sought.

$1.5 billion is the largest settlement payout in U.S. history, and the authors involved, myself included, stand to gain $3000 per stolen work. But it’s a lot less than the $150,000 in damages per book that Anthropic would have been forced to pay had it lost at trial. Anthropic stole content from almost 500,000 books, so that sum would have bankrupted the company.

“We are gratified by the Court’s ruling granting final approval of this historic settlement,” lead attorney Justin Nelson said. “It is the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

I look forward to this as well.