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Judge reserves ruling on Anthropic class deal

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12:32UTC

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín took the Bartz settlement motions under submission on 14 May. The $1.5bn is the whole class fund.

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Key takeaway

Martínez-Olguín reserved her ruling; HarperCollins expects part of the class fund, not all $1.5bn.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín heard the motions for final approval and fees in Bartz v Anthropic on 14 May 2026. She did not rule from the bench and asked questions about lawyers' fees, expenses and payments to the named plaintiffs⁠¹.

Judge William Alsup had granted preliminary approval in September 2025. The agreement covers eligible copyright owners of books copied from pirate libraries. Anthropic had paid $300m into the fund; a further $300m is due within five business days of final approval.

The $1.5bn is the whole class fund. News Corp expects a share through HarperCollins, but has not disclosed its allocation. It is not a separate News Corp-Anthropic content licence.

The judge took the motions under submission. The hearing did not establish a second hearing date or a new price for publishers' future licensing negotiations.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

A group of authors sued Anthropic over copied books. The proposed $1.5bn fund covers eligible book copyright owners, including authors and publishers. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín heard the settlement motions on 14 May and reserved her decision. She asked about legal fees and expenses. Anthropic had put $300m into the fund; another $300m is due within five business days of final approval.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The case distinguishes copying books from pirate libraries from using books for model training. The surviving piracy claims led to a class settlement covering eligible book copyright owners.

HarperCollins participates in that class. Robert Thomson's earnings-call remarks described expected proceeds from the shared fund. They did not disclose a $1.5bn allocation to News Corp.

Final approval and the fee award require the court's decision. Web crawler-to-referral ratios do not measure the book copying at issue.

What could happen next?

Meaning
If Alsup converts his fee query into a class-adequacy challenge, the $1.5bn figure becomes reopenable, which would raise Anthropic's total liability exposure and accelerate every other pending AI copyright plaintiff toward settlement. The distinction between class-settlement floor and bilateral licensing ceiling is now live in the public record, which means publishers in active bilateral negotiations with Anthropic can cite the settlement as a floor while keeping the bilateral ceiling open.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

In March 2011, Judge Denny Chin denied final approval of the Google Books settlement in the Southern District of New York. His concerns included representation, the treatment of absent rightsholders and rights beyond the claims being litigated.

That decision shows why a negotiated class agreement still needs court approval. It does not predict the outcome of Bartz or establish how long its fee review will take.

Anthropic had already paid $300m into the settlement fund. The agreement makes the next $300m payment due within five business days of final approval. Further instalments, fees and administration affect the timing and amount of distributions.

Delaying approval postpones that payment trigger. Anthropic's revenue growth does not supply a borrowing rate or measure the financial cost of the delay. The fund also does not set a binding price for future licences.

At the hearing: Martínez-Olguín questioned the requested legal fees and expense reserve. She asked counsel for Ninth Circuit cases supporting the fee multiplier, the ratio between the requested fee and an hours-based calculation.

Objections: Authors raised concerns about excluded works, copyright registration, compensation and continued use. These were separate objections, not an identified finding that News Corp dominated the class.

What remains open: The court has reserved its decision. The hearing provides no fixed timetable for approval and no assurance that a second hearing will occur.

Sources:Claims Journal

Mentions:Judge William Alsup →Anthropic →News Corp →Robert Thomson →Google →California →San Francisco →DotDash Meredith →OpenAI →Reach plc →Amazon →New York Times →Claude Cowork →Dario Amodei →Center for Journalism & Liberty →EU AI Act →

First Reported In

Update #2 · BuzzFeed sold for AI; agentic ads go primetime

Claims Journal· 17 May 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

News Corp expects share of Anthropic class fund

Bartz v. Anthropic correction directly responds to U#1's framing of Thomson's $1.5bn 'anticipated settlement' figure as a bilateral licensing template.

Occurred 8 May 2026

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Reach signs AWS pay-per-usage AI licensing deal

Bartz settlement floor clarifies the distinction between bilateral licensing deals (Reach/AWS, NYT/Amazon) and litigation-derived class-action floors.

Occurred 1 Apr 2026

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This Event

Judge reserves ruling on Anthropic class deal

The class settlement remains under judicial review. Its total does not establish a bilateral price for News Corp's content.

Led to

Judge probes $1.5bn Anthropic class deal

Judge Alsup's prior declination of the Bartz settlement on fee grounds set the procedural context in which Judge Martínez-Olguín (now reassigned) is conducting fresh scrutiny of the settlement terms.

Occurred 18 May 2026

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Different Perspectives

Publicis Groupe

Publicis Groupe credited AI demand for its Connected Media growth in the 13 October third-quarter release, reporting net revenue of €3,808m, up 5.0% organically. It named no AI product, so investors get the AI claim without a product to measure it against.

Educational Broadcasting System

Educational Broadcasting System premiered EBS AI Literature Theatre on 16 October, remaking 11 Korean literary classics with generative AI. Korea's public education broadcaster puts AI-made drama on air under its own name, while the BBC's director-general said he 'got in trouble' for praising an AI Doctor Who episode.

Hakuhodo

Hakuhodo began selling its in-house Image Similarity Checker on 19 October, scoring AI-generated ad creative against similar images on the web and logging who checked what. The Japanese agency is selling the compliance step around generative advertising and leaves the legal judgment with its clients.

Lisa Nandy

Nandy told Sky on 15 October she is minded to issue a public interest intervention notice on its purchase of ITV's Media and Entertainment business, on four grounds including news plurality. She notes Comcast's Sky News undertakings expire in December 2028 and do not cover ITV News or ITN, in which Sky would take a 20% stake.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation asked Parliament's AI committee to extend the News Bargaining Incentive to AI firms and hold them to the copyright, defamation and privacy rules news outlets follow. With SBS telling the same committee that robots.txt is routinely ignored, the public broadcasters are contesting the opt-out Anthropic proposed.

Editorial Perfil

Perfil reported on 14 October that Civil Court No. 57 kept its damages suit against OpenAI and Microsoft out of the federal courts, and it wants a pre-trial inspection of their California servers. Its lawyer says Microsoft Argentina came to mediation without a serious offer, and Perfil seeks payment rather than takedowns.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.