Source: The Guardian

Bloomsbury, the publisher of the Harry Potter books, is listed as a beneficiary of a $1.5bn (£1.12bn) copyright settlement between AI startup Anthropic and thousands of authors and publishers, with 14,087 Bloomsbury titles included and a proposed compensation of about $3,000 per title. After an approximate 10% deduction for attorney fees and expenses, Bloomsbury and the affected authors can expect about $19m (£14m) to be distributed, with Bloomsbury saying payments could arrive in instalments possibly starting in the second half of its fiscal year. The US district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said the settlement provided “meaningful relief” to those covered, and about 91% of the 482,000 works in the suit have been claimed.

The litigation began when novelist Andrea Bartz and two other authors filed the lawsuit in 2024; the authors’ lead lawyer, Justin Nelson, described the outcome as “the largest known copyright recovery in history.” Anthropic’s deputy general counsel, Aparna Sridhar, said more than 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share and that the company looks forward to closing the matter. The firm has also been expanding subject areas for AI training and offers an opt-in licensing scheme under which authors who allow their work to be used would receive royalties; Bloomsbury had announced an AI licensing deal the prior year to sell academic works for training generative AI programmes.