Istanbul / Anadolu

British publishing house Bloomsbury, known for publishing the Harry Potter series, is set to receive compensation in the millions of dollars after a US court approved a historic $1.5 billion settlement with Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, in a copyright infringement case.

This settlement comes amid a rise in lawsuits against AI companies for using copyrighted works without a license.

The US District Court for the Northern District of California finalized the settlement on July 20, ending lawsuits that accused Anthropic of illegally obtaining millions of books to train its AI models.

Bloomsbury confirmed in a statement on Wednesday that it is among the beneficiaries of the class settlement.

The court list includes 14,087 titles belonging to Bloomsbury that are eligible for compensation.

Each eligible work is expected to receive approximately $3,000 before deduction of legal fees and other costs, with the amount to be shared equally, in most cases, between the publisher and the author.

Compensation to rights holders, including Bloomsbury, is expected to be paid in installments, with the first likely to arrive in the second half of the company's fiscal year.

For its part, Anthropic denied any wrongdoing and did not admit legal liability, asserting that the use of copyrighted works falls under the 'fair use' doctrine.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed in 2024 by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who accused the company of downloading large numbers of copyrighted books from unauthorized online libraries, known as 'shadow libraries', to train its AI models.

The case later evolved into a class action covering hundreds of thousands of books.

This settlement is the first of its kind among major settlements resulting from dozens of copyright lawsuits filed in the United States against AI companies on behalf of authors, publishers, and media organizations.

This settlement is considered the first of its kind among several similar lawsuits in the United States. Despite Anthropic's denial of any wrongdoing, it agreed to pay compensation. This case is expected to set a legal precedent affecting the AI industry and its relationship with copyright. Publishers and authors are closely watching how the compensation, which will cover thousands of titles, is distributed.