Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with authors is the largest known copyright recovery in US history. But as the first payments approach, authors, publishers and literary agents are fighting over who gets the money.

The class action, Bartz v. Anthropic, was brought by thriller novelist Andrea Bartz and other writers over books Anthropic downloaded from pirate libraries to train its Claude chatbot. A US judge, Araceli Martinez-Olguin, granted final approval on July 20, 2026.

The fund covers about 482,460 works at roughly $3,000 each before legal fees. First payments of about $2,203.56 per title are scheduled for November 1 to 15, with a further $450 million due from Anthropic in September 2027. More than 91% of eligible authors and publishers have filed claims.

Here is where the fight starts. Publishers and agents are filing competing claims on payouts that authors say they do not own. Money is released only for works where every rightsholder agrees on the split.

The default split: for books still in print with a traditional publisher, the payment is divided 50-50. If rights reverted to the author before August 10, 2022, or the author self-published, the author claims the full amount.