Judge cites concerns in Anthropic’s proposed $1.5B settlement case, says class lawyers are striking a deal in secret

￰1￱ William Alsup cited concerns in the hearing of Anthropic PBC’s proposed $1.5 billion copyright settlement case, saying class lawyers are striking a deal in ￰2￱ believes the initiative will be forced towards ￰3￱ federal judge said at the hearing that the motion to approve the deal was denied without ￰4￱ the hearing, he later acknowledged in a minute order that approval is postponed pending submission of further clarifying ￰5￱ believes lawyers are striking deals in secret This case is important because 1) Judge sided w/ ￰6￱ acquired copyrighted books are okay for training because the outputs were transformed into something new. "Training use was a fair use" 2) The $1.5B sum is because Anthropic illegally acquired some of them. ￰0￱ — Sally Shin (@sallyshin) September 5, 2025 Alsup claimed he felt misled during the first hearing after the deal was announced on September ￰7￱ also said he needs more information about the claim process for class ￰8￱ judge of the ￰9￱ Court for the Northern District of California revealed that he has an uneasy feeling about hangers with the amount of money in the ￰10￱ also believes that the agreement is nowhere close to ￰11￱ received some assurance from the authors’ counsel, Justin Nelson of Susman Godfrey LLP, that the attorneys care deeply about every single proper claim getting ￰12￱ also added that he expects a high claim rate due to the high-profile nature of the ￰13￱ federal judge said on Monday he was disappointed that the parties left out important questions for the future, Cryptopolitan ￰14￱ noted that the counsel had left out a list of works covered by the deal and the process for notifying potential class ￰15￱ said the omitted questions must be addressed before preliminary approval can be ￰16￱ judge’s criticism also forces attorneys to adjust a proposed settlement and a template for similar AI copyright ￰17￱ Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, argued that the court lacked understanding of how the publishing industry ￰18￱ claimed that the court was envisioning a claims process that would be ￰19￱ added that the court sees a world with collateral litigation between authors and publishers for years to come.

Anthropic’s case establishes a benchmark for firms to resolve similar claims Anthropic’s case would resolve the authors’ class action over PBC downloading millions of pirated ￰20￱ Hummel, an attorney at McKool Smith, said the proposed $3,000-per-book settlement establishes a potential benchmark for other companies to resolve similar claims. “This is very sobering for other AI ￰21￱ content licensing market will accelerate, and the dollars will be bigger.” -Chad Hummel, Attorney at McKool ￰22￱ noted that class members are often tricked in many class actions once the monetary relief is established and attorneys stop ￰23￱ ordered the parties to give very good notice to class members to ensure they could opt in or ￰24￱ judge also believes the initiative will protect the AI company from being sued by other potential claimants in the same ￰25￱ federal judge also criticized class counsel for enlisting a flurry of attorneys to work on the settlement disbursement, including some from the Authors Guild and Association of American ￰26￱ said extra attorneys won’t be paid from the settlement funds and that attorneys’ fees will be based on how much is paid to class ￰27￱ argued that the attorneys are meant to help with complex ownership ￰28￱ judge called on the parties to design a claim form where owners with copyright claims can opt in to the ￰29￱ said the settlement won’t cover the works of owners who opt ￰30￱ also requested a form for each claim to be submitted, and any disputes over ownership to go to ￰31￱ have until September 15 to submit a final list of works, which currently stands around 465,000.

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