Overview

• Anthropic has asked the Ninth Circuit to overturn Judge Alsup’s July 17 certification order, arguing that exposing it to massive statutory damages could bankrupt the company.
• Judge Alsup certified a nationwide class of authors whose works were allegedly used without permission, appointed three lead plaintiffs and scheduled a December 1 trial with a September 1 deadline to submit the list of works at issue.
• Publishers’ coordination counsel—including Edelson PC and Oppenheim & Zebrak—have joined the original plaintiffs’ firms under Association of American Publishers oversight to prepare class filings.
• Plaintiffs allege that Anthropic copied roughly seven million books from shadow libraries such as Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror to train its AI models.
• Legal observers say the Ninth Circuit’s upcoming decision and the December trial will shape future AI data-sourcing practices and clarify the limits of fair-use protections for generative models.