Start of a trend? The news that Anthropic settles its high-profile AI copyright lawsuit with book authors may illustrate that both sides have leverage in these disputes.
As reported in Wired (Anthropic Settles High-Profile AI Copyright Lawsuit Brought by Book Authors, written by Kate Knibbs and available here), Anthropic has reached a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by a group of prominent authors, marking a major turn in of the most significant ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in history. The move will allow Anthropic to avoid what could have been a financially devastating outcome in court.
The settlement agreement is expected to be finalized September 3, with more details to follow, according to a legal filing published on Tuesday. Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Anthropic declined to comment.
In 2024, three book writers, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, sued Anthropic, alleging that the startup illegally used their work to train its artificial intelligence models. In June, California district court judge William Alsup issued a summary judgment in Bartz v. Anthropic (reported by us here) that largely sided with Anthropic, finding that the company’s usage of the books was “fair use” and thus legal.
But the judge ruled that the manner in which Anthropic had acquired some of the works, by downloading them through so-called shadow libraries, including a notorious site called LibGen, constituted piracy. Alsup ruled that the book authors could still take Anthropic to trial in a class action for pirating their works; the legal showdown was slated to begin in December.
Statutory damages for this kind of piracy start at $750 per infringed work, according to US copyright law. Because the library of books amassed by Anthropic was thought to contain approximately 7 million works, the AI company was potentially facing court-imposed penalties amounting to billions, possibly more than $1 trillion dollars.
Boom. It took a mere two months after that for the parties to apparently settle – a “blink of an eye” in litigations like this.
Anthropic is still facing a number of other copyright-related legal challenges. One of the most high-profile disputes involves a group of major record labels, including Universal Music Group, which allege that the company illegally trained its AI programs on copyrighted lyrics. Of course, the plaintiffs recently filed to amend their case to allege that Anthropic had used the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent to download songs illegally.
Of course they did. All is not just fair in love and war, but litigation as well. The “fair use” may be undone by unfair acquisition. It will be interesting to see if other cases follow suit.
So, what do you think? Are you surprised by the news that Anthropic settles its high-profile AI copyright lawsuit, after it had seemingly gotten the ruling it wanted just two months ago? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Image created using Microsoft Designer, using the term “robot lawyers engaged in tug of war”.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the authors and speakers themselves, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.