Andrea Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC: Landmark Settlement in the AI Training Litigation

On August 26, 2025, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Francisco Division), presided over by Judge William H. Alsup, received a Notice of Settlement and a Joint Stipulation for Stay in the matter of Andrea Bartz, Andrea Bartz, Inc., Charles Graeber, Kirk Wallace Johnson, MJ + KJ, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC.

Closely followed by the global legal community specializing in artificial intelligence, this case concerned the use of copyrighted works in training large-scale AI systems.

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1) Origin and Nature of the Dispute

As set forth in the Complaint, which I previously analyzed in a separate article at the time of its filing and subsequent amendment, plaintiffs alleged that Anthropic PBC had included substantial excerpts from their copyrighted works (novels, essays, journalistic pieces) in the training datasets for its generative AI models without authorization, license, or compensation.

The legal claims asserted included:

• Copyright infringement under the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 106), specifically the exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution;
• Violation of moral and economic rights of authors, depriving them of attribution and remuneration;
• Tort liability for unauthorized reproduction and distribution;
• The inapplicability of the “fair use” doctrine given the scale, commercial nature, and lack of transformative purpose of the use.

These allegations placed the case at the center of the global debate on the legality of using protected works for AI training purposes.

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2) Scope and Impact of the Settlement

On August 19, 2025, following a mediation conducted by the Hon. Layn Phillips, the parties reached a class-wide binding term sheet resolving all claims. The settlement amount remains confidential, but given the magnitude of the dispute and its implications for both the AI and publishing industries, it is likely to be substantial.

Under the Joint Stipulation filed on August 26, 2025, the parties jointly requested:

• a stay of all proceedings and deadlines, and
• the setting of a preliminary approval hearing during the week of September 8, 2025, to obtain court approval of the settlement.

If granted, this settlement will likely become a key reference point for future regulation of copyrighted works used in AI training datasets.

Readers may access the court’s order approving the settlement here once it becomes available.

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This article is written by a French attorney. For legal advice on U.S. law, readers should consult a licensed U.S. attorney.