Overview

• The US District Court for the Northern District of California deemed Anthropic’s use of scanned copies of legally purchased books for training its Claude AI model to be a transformative fair-use practice.
• The same ruling held that Anthropic’s retention of over seven million pirated e-books is a separate infringement not shielded by fair use.
• Judge William Alsup emphasized that fair use hinges on lawful acquisition of materials and does not extend to content obtained illegally.
• Legal experts say the decision could serve as a benchmark and influence outcomes in numerous pending lawsuits against AI firms over unlicensed data use.
• Both Anthropic and the suing authors—Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson—are entitled to pursue appeals on the partial summary judgment.