Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement pays Harry Potter publisher $19M
Anthropic has reached a $1.5 billion copyright settlement with thousands of authors over the use of their protected work to train its Claude AI chatbots, with Bloomsbury Publishing set to receive roughly $19 million of that total. The London-based publisher, home to J.K. Rowling, Sarah J. Maas, and Susanna Clarke, had 14,087 titles listed in the settlement at a proposed compensation of about $3,000 per title. After attorney fees and other expenses are deducted, that sum will be split between Bloomsbury and the affected authors, with payments expected to begin arriving in instalments as early as the second half of this fiscal year.
The case, which began when novelist Andrea Bartz and two other authors filed suit in 2024, has been described by the authors’ lead lawyer as the largest known copyright recovery in history. A US district judge approved the deal on Monday, calling it meaningful relief for those affected. About 91 percent of the 482,000 works covered in the lawsuit have been claimed by rights holders, a figure Anthropic itself highlighted as a sign of broad acceptance.
The settlement is the first major resolution to emerge from the dozens of AI copyright lawsuits working their way through US courts on behalf of authors and news organizations, making it a significant marker for how the industry might reckon with its use of protected creative work going forward.
