Araceli Martínez-Olguín

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín presided over the 14 May 2026 fairness hearing in Bartz v Anthropic, the class-action copyright lawsuit in which authors sued Anthropic over the use of their works to train Claude. She took the $1.5bn settlement under submission at the hearing's close, with a claims rate of 92.77% (the proportion of eligible class members who filed valid claims). She simultaneously ordered supplemental briefing on the status of opt-outs filed after the original deadline, a procedural step that indicates she is scrutinising whether the class is properly bounded before approving the deal.

Martínez-Olguín was confirmed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in August 2023, nominated by President Biden. She previously served as a Magistrate Judge in the same district and before that as a staff attorney at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She is one of several Northern District judges handling major AI copyright cases; the district has become the de facto venue for technology IP litigation given its proximity to Silicon Valley. Her calendar includes multiple other AI-related cases, making her one of the most consequential individual decision-makers in the emerging US AI copyright framework.

The Bartz v Anthropic settlement, if approved, would be the largest AI copyright resolution in US history and would set the commercial and legal precedent for how training-data claims are valued. Martínez-Olguín's scrutiny of the opt-out process suggests she is not prepared to rubber-stamp the deal; her supplemental briefing order gives late opt-outs potential leverage to seek improved terms, and her final ruling will define the scope of the release that Anthropic receives.