Overview

• On July 17, Judge William Alsup approved a nationwide class for U.S. authors whose works were downloaded from pirate sites LibGen and PiLiMi.
• In a June 23 summary judgment, the court held that training Anthropic’s Claude model on copyrighted books is transformative and protected by fair use.
• The ruling separately found that Anthropic’s long-term storage of over seven million pirated books violated copyright and is not shielded by fair-use doctrine.
• If the class prevails at trial, Anthropic could face collective statutory damages potentially reaching into the billions of dollars.
• The decision offers an early legal framework for AI firms’ data-sourcing practices and could shape related copyright cases in multidistrict litigation.