Authors included in the settlement now stand to be paid as much as $3,000 per work. Furthermore, publishers stand to reap a major windfall, with some of the larger publishers due to receive tens of millions of dollars.

By Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor-in-Chief

The checks will soon be in the mail after a federal judge this week granted final approval to the landmark $1.5 billion settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic. Just over two months since an uneventful final fairness hearing in May, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in the Northern District of California ruled that the settlement met the legal standard of being “fair, reasonable, and adequate.”

“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,” Martínez-Olguín held, adding that the class’s response to the settlement was “overwhelmingly favorable” with the claims rate reaching at least 91.3% of eligible works—nearly 500,000 works in total.

The judge also rejected the handful of objections to the proposed settlement, after attorneys noted during the May fairness hearing that the settlement opt-out rate was “miniscule,” with only 53 objections, roughly half of which (26) were from people requesting that their works be added to the settlement itself.

The closely watched settlement comes after judge William Alsup, in a mixed summary judgment decision last June, found that Anthropic’s unauthorized use of copyrighted books to train its Claude AI system was fair use, but also found that the company’s decision to keep millions of unauthorized downloads for a permanent “central” research library was likely infringing, and ordered the company to stand trial on that claim, prompting the settlement.

Authors included in the settlement now stand to be paid as much as $3,000 per work. Furthermore, publishers stand to reap a major windfall, with some of the larger publishers due to receive tens of millions of dollars.

“We applaud the court’s final approval of this settlement, which represents an important victory in the larger battle to hold big tech accountable for its unscrupulous appropriation of intellectual and creative properties that clearly belong to authors and publishers,” said AAP President and CEO Maria Pallante in a statement. “In this case, the court recognized that downloading from pirate sites is not a choice we should simply accept as an efficiency for the infringer; on the contrary, it’s abhorrent conduct that should never be normalized.”

The only notable change in the order pertained to attorneys fees, which the judge slashed nearly in half from the requested amount.

While it is “well established” that 25% of a common fund is a presumptively reasonable amount of attorney’s fees in U.S. class actions, the judge held, that percentage does not necessarily apply to so-called mega-funds—which would include the $1.5 billion settlement in this case. Lawyers had requested a fee award of 12.5%, or roughly $187.5 million, which the court rejected, instead awarding class counsel a total fee award of $101,561,111—still a record payday for a copyright infringement suit.

“This amounts to nearly 6.8% of the settlement fund, which is a reasonable percentage given a fund of this size,” Martínez-Olguín ruled.