Bloomsbury, the London publisher best known for the Harry Potter series, has confirmed it will collect a share of Anthropic’s $1.5bn settlement with authors, the largest copyright payout in US history.
The company told the stock market this week that 14,087 of its titles sit on the list of works covered by the deal, which a federal judge signed off on on Monday.
The money stems from Bartz v. Anthropic, the class action a group of writers brought after the AI firm was found to have downloaded millions of pirated books to train its Claude models.
The case had already produced a rare fairness hearing before Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted final approval, inheriting the matter from Judge William Alsup, who has since retired.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!The three named plaintiffs, novelist Andrea Bartz and the non-fiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, first struck the agreement with Anthropic in September 2025. Alsup granted preliminary approval that month, and the case then passed to Martínez-Olguín for this week’s final sign-off.
