One of the sleeper issues in the lawsuits filed by book authors against Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and others is whether the courts will certify a class of book authors in any of the lawsuits.
Last week, Judge Alsup was the first federal judge to consider a motion for class certification in one of these AI copyright lawsuits. Already we can see some of the challenges that courts face under the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23.
1. Judge Alsup’s proposed definition of the class
From Bartz’s supplemental brief, Judge Alsup suggested the following class (extracted from his questions for supplemental briefing):
However, this definition of the class actually would exclude the named plaintiffs Bartz and Johnson, who don’t own the copyrights to their books; instead, their loan-out companies do. But the plaintiffs seem to be fine with that:
2. Plaintiffs propose several “minor modications” to Judge Alsup’s definition of the class
The plaintiffs offer several modifications, one that attempts to ensure only book authors who are eligible for statutory damages (due to copyright registration before infringement or within 3 months of publication) are within the class. Interestingly, the class excludes violations of the right to make derivative works.
Judge Alsup’s Questions for Supplemental Briefing
DOWNLOAD BARTZ’S SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF