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Anthropic - Multi-Plaintiff Lawsuit for Authors who Opt Out of Class Settlement
Call to Action for Writers: OPT-OUT of Anthropic class action settlement by February 9, 2026 to preserve your rights!
The AI giant - a $350 billion dollar corporation - used these books to train Claude without permission from the copyright holders, and without paying any license fees for the use of the works to train the LLM. The judge in Bartz v. Anthropic held in an interim opinion that downloading books from websites that explicitly consist of pirated books was not subject to Anthropic's fair use defense (and such use by Anthropic potential infringed copyright in each of those books). Based on that decision, the case settled before trial. The class action settlement will result in payments of approximately $3,000 per book for the copyright holders of the pirated works that the AI company copied for heir central library and separately used to train Claude. For most authors, 50% of the award will go to their publishers unless you have a contract that states otherwise.
Authors have until February 9, 2026 to opt out of the settlement and reserve the right to bring a separate lawsuit against Anthropic to seek more compensation for the illegal pirating of their books without their permission and separately for Anthropic's training their AI model that is being built to be a replacement for those books. The issue of whether and how much AI companies should have to pay to license literary works to separately train their LLMs is an existential threat to the writer community. The range of statutory damages under federal law for an intentional copyright infringement is up to $150,000 per work. The minimum is $200 for innocent infringement and $750 for non-willful infringement. Actual damages do not have to be proven to get an award in this range. Statutory damages serve as punitive damages and attorneys' fees can be awarded if the jury considers the behavior of the copyright infringer - here, Anthropic - to have been particularly egregious, namely willful, reckless or intentional.
Many authors have determined that the present settlement is an insult. They have decided to opt out of the settlement and join a multi-plaintiff suit being spearheaded by James Bartolomei of the Duncan Firm and Mark Kaufman of Kaufman & Kahn, LLP. The lawyers are handling this matter on a contingency basis, which means that they will cover all litigation costs and will only get compensated if the case is successful. Hrbek Law is providing legal support and consulting based on our expertise in publishing law, and we are advising authors who are considering their options with respect to the class action settlement. As the multi-plaintiff case gets underway, we will act as client liaison to the writer plaintiffs with whom our firm has a relationship.
To see if any of your works are covered by the settlement in the Anthropic class action, SEARCH HERE. NOTE that to be eligible for the settlement (and therefore to be eligible to opt out of the settlement), the copyright in your books must have been registered with the Library of Congress by no later than August 2022 - when the Bartz action was commenced - or earlier.
If any of your works are on the Works Lookup list, this confirms they were copied and/or trained by Anthropic. To receive the $3K per book, you are required to submit a claim by March 30, 2026. If you want to reserve your right to join the multi-plaintiff (individual claims) suit that Hrbek Law is supporting, you must send a formal opt-out notice to Anthropic no later than February 9, 2026. If you explore that option and later decide you'd prefer to take the class action settlement amount instead, you can opt back in by March 9, 2026. But if you miss the deadline for opting out, you can't later change your mind about that. March 30, 2026 is the final deadline to make a claim.
If you have any questions about your options with respect to the class action and/or if you want to learn more about the new Anthropic lawsuit, how eligible authors can participate and what you stand to gain by doing so, please CONTACT US now! Time is running short to make your decision, and it is important to ensure that you are making an informed decision.
