Share on LinkedInShare on LinkedIn

ARTICLE · 29 JULY 2025

Judge Certifies Authors' Copyright Class Action Against Anthropic

Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP
Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP
Contributor
Explore more from Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP

On July 17, 2025, US District Court Judge William Alsup approved a class certification against Anthropic for copyright infringement.

United StatesIntellectual Property

On July 17, 2025, US District Court Judge William Alsup approved a class certification against Anthropic for copyright infringement.

According to Judge Alsup, it will be straightforward for the entire class to prove harm caused by Anthropic's "Napster-style downloading of millions of works" from pirate libraries and that "if not brought as a class action, there will likely be no action at all."

This decision comes several weeks after Judge Alsup ruled that Anthropic's use of legally purchased books to train its large language model (LLM) constitutes Fair Use under the Copyright Act. However, Anthropic's means of acquiring other copyrighted works by downloading source copies of pirated materials is not excused by their ultimate purpose of LLM training.

We operate a free-to-view policy, asking only that you register in order to read all of our content. Please login or register to view the rest of this article.

See more popular content from