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Here’s What Happened:
Our blog post of 7/8/2025 covered the Bartz v. Anthropic decision. The court had decided Anthropic’s use of purchased works to train its large language model (LLM) for artificial intelligence was fair use. But, Anthropic’s use of pirated works would not be fair use. The court continued the matter for trial in December 2025 to determine the amount of damages incurred by the owners of the pirated works.
The court has now certified the plaintiff authors as a class. A class action addresses harm to a large group who have the same or similar claims and similar damages. Class actions are justified when it would be impractical to have separate lawsuits by individual plaintiffs. The certification of the class allows the named plaintiffs and their attorneys to act on behalf of all members of the class. Then members of the class are included in the ultimate judgment without having to appear individually.
WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS: If you are an author who registered your works with the Copyright Office, you may be eligible to be a class member. If your work is licensed to another (like a publisher) read your agreement to make sure you still have a right to pursue your cause of action. The Authors Guild has useful information about the class action for authors.
Cited Authority: Bartz v. Anthropic PBC,, No. C 24-05417 WHA.