Judge approves Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement with authors

US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted final approval on July 20, 2026 to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with a class of authors in Bartz v. Anthropic. The largest US copyright settlement covers over 480,000 works at roughly $3,000 each, resolves the first AI training-data copyright lawsuit, and requires Anthropic to destroy pirated copies.