Anthropic’s landmark $1.5 billion copyright settlement with book authors has received final approval, moving the case toward payouts.

The settlement, first announced in September, resolves the class action Bartz v Anthropic. A judge approved the deal covering about 482,460 books and articles, which works out to roughly $3,000 per work. Anthropic admitted to downloading around seven million books from pirate libraries such as Library Genesis and PiLiMi.

The settlement is one of the largest ever in a copyright case. It covers works used to train Anthropic’s Claude models. More than 91 per cent of claimed works are expected to qualify for payment, according to court filings.

Authors who filed claims are expected to receive their first payments by November 15, 2026. The deal avoids a trial that could have cost Anthropic far more if it had lost.

The case is one of many copyright battles between AI companies and creators. Similar suits against OpenAI, Meta and others are still working through the courts. The Anthropic settlement is seen as a benchmark for how such cases may be resolved.