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Posted by Victoria Strauss

https://writerbeware.blog/2026/04/10/anthropic-copyright-settlement-april-update/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=anthropic-copyright-settlement-april-update

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The deadline to file a claim in the $1.5 billion Bartz v. Anthropic copyright settlement passed at midnight on March 30, 2026. Now that all claims have been filed, I’m taking a look at where things stand and what’s yet to come.

If you need a refresh, my backgrounder on the settlement and the class action lawsuit that spawned it is here.

The Fairness Hearing is currently scheduled for May 14…

…though it could be further delayed. It’s already been pushed back once.

The hearing is a final step in the process of approving or rejecting the settlement. The court considers objections, opt-outs, attorneys’ fees, and the fairness of the settlement as a whole. Per the judge’s order, class members who’ve filed objections can speak at the hearing via Zoom (there’s a Zoom link in the order). I’ve heard from a couple of people who were hoping to attend in person; I don’t know what the status of that is.

Payouts to class members will be issued only after the judge has granted final approval, and any appeals of the settlement have been resolved. There’s currently no timeline for that; you can ignore the August 10 estimate in settlement FAQ #35, which was optimistic even last September when the FAQ was created. So don’t expect to get a check (or checks: payments may be issued in installments) anytime soon. On the plus side, the settlement fund, into which Anthropic is paying in installments, will be earning interest, so any delays will increase individual payments.

Disputes between rightsholders will be resolved by a court-appointed Special Master.

Class participation has been robust

The pirate datasets that Anthropic used for training comprised around seven million works. Because the settlement’s definition of the class excluded foreign works and works without a US copyright registration–with such works representing the vast majority of the pirated works–the estimated number of works eligible to be incuded in the settlement was only 500,000. The finalized list of eligible works wound up slightly smaller, at 482,460. (Settlement FAQs #51 and #52 explain how the list was compiled.)

According to the motion for final approval,

The Class’s participation in the Settlement has been outstanding. As of March 19, there are 99,450
claims for 264,809 Works, representing 54% of the Works List. By contrast, there are 350 opt-outs (less than 0.5% of the Works List) and 41 objections (only 32 of which are from Class Members).

If you’re wondering why participation of just over 54% qualifies as outstanding, participation in class action settlements is typically extremely low–below 10%, according to some estimates. Average payouts are correspondingly small. The Anthropic settlement, by contrast, guarantees a payout of at least $3,000 per eligible work–and unlike many other class actions, the settlement fund is non-reversionary, which means that any leftover funds will be distributed to class members, potentially making the payout even higher. Though many authors will have to split their payout with their publishers, the unusually large payout, along with major publicity about the settlement and extensive outreach by authors’ groups and others, has incentivized response.

The number of claims will certainly have risen in the two weeks between the filing of the motion and the March 30 deadline. Will they come close to the full number of eligible works? My bet is no, but stay tuned.

Lawyers’ fees have been reduced

Class counsel initially requested a fee of 20% of the settlement fund ($300 million plus several million in expenses), with a quarter of that amount going to the several additional law firms brought on to handle administration of the settlement. The original judge in the case (Judge Alsup, who retired at the end of December 2025), was extremely blunt in his opposition to this request, especially regarding payment to the proliferating law firms.

In a filing on March 20, class counsel capitulated, cutting their request nearly in half:

Plaintiffs move for (1) 12.5 percent of the $1.5+ billion Settlement Fund in attorneys’ fees
to Class Counsel; (2) reimbursement of $2,779,950.26 in litigation expenses incurred by Class
Counsel; (3) a cost reserve of $18,220,000 for future expenses, including payment to the Settlement
Administrator; and (4) service awards of $50,000 to each Class Representative.

Average lawyers’ fees in this type of class action typically range between 25%-35%.

Macmillan’s promise re: failure to register copyright

An unpleasant corollary of the Anthropic settlement has been writers’ discovery that their publishers may not have registered their copyrights as required by their contracts, making those works ineligible for the settlement even though they were part of the pirated datasets used by Anthropic. Alone among such publishers AFAIK, Macmillan has promised to address this lapse. From Publishers Lunch:

On that front, at least, there is some good news for Macmillan authors. The company shares with PL that it has been communicating to authors and agents who have inquired about unregistered copyrights, acknowledging, “From what we currently understand, this was largely our mistake and we take full responsibility. If your work was excluded from the settlement for this reason, we will make you whole by paying you what you otherwise would have been paid under the settlement.”

I’ve seen confirmation of this promise in a recent agency email.

It’s more complicated than just making payments for unregistered books, however. Macmillan will have to figure out whether the works were among the seven million included in the datasets. As far as I know, only one of the two datasets used by Anthropic (LibGen) is publicly available.

Anthropic wants to consolidate cases

Several authors who opted out of the settlement subsequently filed infringement lawsuits against Anthropic and several other AI companies. The lawsuits were filed as a group, but not as a class, with the plaintiffs seeking individualized awards of statutory damages to be determined by a jury.

In a March 25 filing, Anthropic gave notice that it has moved to sever these lawsuits’ claims against it from the claims against the other companies and, if severance is granted, that it will move to consolidate the claims with Bartz. While consolidation would presumably limit those authors’ restitution to the amount guaranteed by the settlement, which is considerably less than the up to $150,000 per work in statutory damages the authors are seeking, that’s less than pocket change to Anthropic, so I’d guess that it mostly doesn’t want to have to deal with the legal hassle of these individual suits. (The new judge in the case, Judge Martinez-Olguin, has indicated that she’s unlikely to grant Anthropic’s request.)

One objection to the settlement could make a significant difference…if the court agrees

In addition to claims and opt-outs, there have been objections to the settlement. As noted above, as of March 19 the number of objections stood at 41, 32 of which were from class members.

The motion summarizes these, starting on page 25, including those filed under seal (the court has ordered that these be unsealed, but as of this writing, most aren’t yet available on the docket). They include objections to the amount of the settlement (either that the total amount is inadequate or that the per-work award isn’t sufficient), objections to the amount of attorneys’ fees, objections to the court-approved notice sent to class members and/or the way it was distributed, objections from writers who missed the opt-out deadline and are seeking an exception, miscellaneous objections including one arguing that books that serve a “more important function” should recieve a higher payout than “fiction and humor” books (!), objections to the inclusion of publishers in the award distribution, and objections seeking to expand the class definition by including foreign and non-copyright registered works.

Regarding the latter two issues, one objection is especially interesting. Filed by law professor Lea Bishop, this objection takes issue not only with publishers’ inclusion in the distribution plan and the sharply-limited class definition that locks thousands of pirated works out of the settlement, but with class representation, alleging that class counsel and publishers coordinated to enable publishers to insert themselves as payees (in a post on the Authors Cuild’s discussion forum, the AG has disputed this characterization). The entire objection is worth reading, but here’s the basic argument:

Excluding publishers would obviously raise the payouts to authors. But including foreign and unregistered works would vastly expand the scope of the settlement, adding tens of thousands if not millions of works. If you’re thinking that would in turn reduce payouts, the terms of the settlement ensure otherwise (see page 13):

Finally, $1.5 billion (plus accrued interest) is the minimum size of the Settlement Fund….If the Works List ultimately exceeds 500,000 works, then Anthropic will pay an additional $3,000 per work that Anthropic adds to the Works List above 500,000 works.

This would be the exact nightmare Anthropic agreed to the settlement to prevent.

For that and other reasons, I’m thinking it’s a long shot. Ms. Bishop has asked to speak and present at the Fairness Hearing, but the judge has denied her request because she “is not a member of the class and therefore lacks standing to object to the settlement.”

Once again–stay tuned!

The post Anthropic Copyright Settlement: April Update appeared first on Writer Beware.

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