# Judge Approves $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement Over Pirated Books Used To Train Claude

> Source: <https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/07/21/1744202/judge-approves-15-billion-anthropic-settlement-over-pirated-books-used-to-train-claude?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed>
> Published: 2026-07-21 18:00:00+00:00

A federal judge has approved Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement over pirated books used to train its Claude chatbot, with authors and publishers set to receive about $3,000 per book. The case produced a mixed ruling for the AI industry: training on copyrighted books was found not to be illegal, but Anthropic's use of pirated copies from shadow libraries was. The Associated Press reports: District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides "meaningful relief" to affected authors and publishers. About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment. Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was "the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible."[Read more of this story](https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/07/21/1744202/judge-approves-15-billion-anthropic-settlement-over-pirated-books-used-to-train-claude?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed) at Slashdot.
