Extensive Filing Describes Overwhelming Support Across Author/Publisher Community and Explains Plaintiffs’ Proposal on Notice, Claims, and Distribution of Anthropic Payment; Action Meets Schedule Set by Court’s September 8 Order and Moves Case Forward Towards September 25, 2025, Preliminary Approval Hearing
September 22, 2025 (San Francisco) — The Anthropic class plaintiffs in Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC, No. 3:24-cv-05417-WHA (N.D. Cal.) today filed an extensive package of materials describing “an exhaustive notice process along with a streamlined, fair, and careful claims process” they propose to use if the agreement receives preliminary approval from the Court. The proposal is supported by a wide array of copyright owners—from various author groups to publishers to the named class representatives themselves.
The product of round-the-clock efforts over the last several weeks, the plan as submitted to the Court reflects extensive, hands-on participation from all three class representatives, working with Class Counsel in consultation with stakeholders and experts from across the author, publishing, and claims administration communities and is supported by 16 separate sworn declarations. It responds in detail to questions raised by Judge Alsup at the first hearing on preliminary approval, building on well-established class action precedents to ensure fairness and due process for all members of the class.
As the brief states, the “goals in proposing this plan of notice and distribution were to make a process that (1) will result in a high claims rate that is efficient for claimants; (2) respects pre-existing contractual relationships; and (3) is consistent with due process and this Court’s guidance.”
All three Class Representative Plaintiffs filed declarations with the court describing their personal involvement in the crafting and development of this plan.
Plaintiff Andrea Bartz, the New York Times bestselling author of five thrillers including We Were Never Here, said: “The works included in this case represent hundreds of millions of hours of labor and immeasurable dedication, creativity, vulnerability, and grit from both authors and publishers. I strongly support this settlement and, in the coming months, I’m committed to helping class members, including my fellow authors, understand the settlement and why it’s such a critical step for those of us who believe that Anthropic violated our copyrights…. Together, authors and publishers are sending a message to AI companies: You are not above the law, and our intellectual property isn’t yours for the taking.”
Plaintiff Charles Graeber, award winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder and The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer, said: “[W]hen I heard about Anthropic’s piracy, I immediately understood the threat that unchecked piracy posed to those [copyright] protections, and the harm already done to myself and many thousands of others who depend on them. I immediately called, offering to join this case. If I could help, I wanted to. . . . Whatever my previous deadlines, there was no case but this civil case; my top job now was to represent all stakeholders in this critical class action to the best of my ability. This responsibility continues to be an honor, whatever it takes.”
Plaintiff Kirk Wallace Johnson, journalist and author of The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, and To Be A Friend Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind and founder of The List Project, a nonprofit that has helped resettle over 2,500 Iraqi refugees, said: “This settlement marks an important moment for the legal and moral framework that has bound us to each other since we started telling each other stories: that it’s wrong to steal; that the system of justice protects us from those that ignore it; and that we don’t have to sacrifice everything we once valued on the altar of big tech.”
A joint declaration of not-for-profit author organizations including Novelists, Inc., Romance Writers of America, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and The Authors Guild states that these groups “support the settlement” including the proposed Notice and Allocation Plan, which they call “fair, reasonable, and adequate.” These experts specifically identified the importance of a simplified, one-step process allowing individual authors to file their own claims and the availability of a non-mandatory default 50/50 split, rooted in industry norms and practices reflected in most trade and university authors’ contracts.
Maria Pallante, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, filed a declaration supporting the settlement and describing robust consultation with publishing organizations including the Association of University Presses, the Independent Book Publishers Association, a number of international associations (including the International Publishers Association and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers), and religious publishing groups (including the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association and Protestant Church-Owned Publishers Association). Ms. Pallante stated “I believe that the settlement as presented is beneficial to all class members… Beyond the monetary terms, the proposed settlement provides enormous value in sending the message that artificial intelligence companies cannot unlawfully acquire literary works from shadow libraries or other pirate sources to use as the building blocks for their businesses.”
The filing describes in detail the components of a robust outreach plan for notice, deploying US email, email, social media, publication and digital targeting, and trade group/peer to peer outreach to reach potential members of the class. Author and publisher groups in the United States as well as Canada and the United Kingdom also have agreed to distribute notice to their members.
It also describes a transparent allocation plan that responds to Judge Alsup’s comments about works with multiple claimants and the need to respect individual contracts by putting in place a default, non-mandatory allocation offering a fair, industry-standard 50/50 author/publisher split for most works (not including educational works where there is no sufficiently widespread standard split and splits will be determined case by case) but also allowing any claimant to decline the default split and engage in a bespoke process to allocate payment for their work.
The Court will consider the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary approval of the settlement at a hearing this Thursday, September 25, 2025, in San Francisco.
More information is available at www.AnthropicCopyrightSettlement.com.
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