Bloomsbury is one of the publishers set to receive a payout from Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement.

      Bloomsbury, the London-based publisher renowned for the Harry Potter series, has confirmed that it will receive a portion of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with authors, marking the largest copyright payout in US history. This week, the company informed the stock market that 14,087 of its titles are included in the agreement, which was endorsed by a federal judge on Monday.

      The funds originate from Bartz v. Anthropic, a class action lawsuit filed by a group of authors after the AI company was found to have illegally downloaded millions of pirated books to train its Claude models. The case had featured an unusual fairness hearing before Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted final approval, taking over the case from Judge William Alsup, who has since retired.

      The three named plaintiffs in the case, novelist Andrea Bartz and non-fiction authors Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, reached their agreement with Anthropic in September 2025. Alsup provided preliminary approval at that time, and the case was later handed to Martínez-Olguín for this week’s final confirmation.

      Under the agreement, each eligible title will receive approximately $3,000 before legal fees and court expenses are deducted. Bloomsbury stated that the amount associated with each of its works would be split evenly between the author and the publisher, leaving each party with around $1,500 per book.

      The company anticipates receiving the funds in installments starting in the latter half of its financial year, as per its regulatory announcement. It did not specify the total amount it expects to receive, noting that final figures are dependent on the court’s administrative process.

      This settlement addresses one of the initial significant evaluations regarding the construction of generative AI systems. While Anthropic legitimately acquired and digitized physical books, it also illegally obtained approximately seven million copies from pirated sources, including Library Genesis in 2021 and the Pirate Library Mirror in 2022. The court treated this practice as separate from the aspect of AI training itself.

      After removing duplicates and ineligible works, around 500,000 distinct titles qualified for the class, each required to possess a US copyright registration to be included. This distinction played a significant role; in June 2025, Alsup ruled that training models on copyrighted text could be regarded as fair use, while acquiring pirated copies could not.

      Rather than appealing, Anthropic opted for a settlement, resulting in the fair-use determination being a singular district-court ruling rather than a binding precedent. In reaching the settlement, Anthropic did not admit to any wrongdoing. The decision to settle was strategic, given that statutory damages can total up to $150,000 per infringed work, a potential exposure that exceeded the $1.5 billion settlement and presented a greater risk in a jury trial. Authors and publishers had until the end of March to submit claims against the approved list of works.

      Publishers are pursuing similar claims elsewhere, with five companies suing Meta regarding Llama and another group initiating legal action against Google over Gemini, each alleging that their catalogs were used without consent or compensation. These cases remain independent and are not influenced by the Anthropic ruling.

      Bloomsbury's participation highlights the scope of the settlement beyond individual authors. The list of covered works encompasses hundreds of thousands of titles, and the standardized payment per book transforms a large back catalog into a significant financial gain.

      Despite the ongoing challenges, Bloomsbury has enjoyed a successful period, driven by strong sales in fantasy, romance, and academic titles acquired through mergers. The funds from Anthropic represent a financial boost rather than a necessity, and they will be shared, title by title, with the authors whose works the company has published.

      When the payments are processed, they will constitute one of the first tangible financial transfers from an AI company to the authors and publishers whose books contributed to its training. Whether this arrangement will set a precedent or remain an isolated instance will ultimately depend on the future decisions of the courts.