Overview

• U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s use of copyrighted books to train its Claude AI model qualifies as fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act.
• Alsup found that retaining over seven million pirated book copies in Anthropic’s central library violated copyright law and scheduled a December trial to assess damages.
• Potential statutory damages for willful infringement could reach $150,000 per work, exposing Anthropic to billions of dollars in liability.
• In a separate case, Judge Vince Chhabria granted Meta summary judgment on fair use for its AI training, reinforcing emerging legal precedents for generative models.
• These rulings represent the first detailed judicial analysis of fair use in generative AI and are expected to guide future disputes over copyrighted materials in model training.