Judge Approves Anthropic's $1.5B Copyright Settlement — Largest Payout in US Copyright History

TechCrunch·high signal

US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted final approval on July 20 to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with authors, overruling objections that the sum was too small. The deal pays roughly $3,000 per work across 480,000+ works — four times the $750 statutory minimum — and requires Anthropic to destroy the 7M+ pirated book files Judge Alsup found it had unlawfully stored. Judge Alsup had separately ruled that training on the books was fair use, so the settlement sets no binding precedent; some authors opted out and are litigating separately.