- Anthropic was sued again in its 10th copyright lawsuit.
- 100 authors who opted out of the Bartz v. Anthropic settlement filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California.
- The complaint seeks up to $71.4 million in statutory damages if willful infringement is proven.
As Anthropic’s valuation as a company grows so do the number of copyright lawsuits against it.
Today, Thomas William Shakespeare from London, along with 99 other authors, sued Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann in the Northern District of California.
All 100 authors allegedly opted out of the Bartz class settlement (with Laura Esquivel and Jordi Castells seeking a late opt out subject to the Bartz court’s approval).
Based on my calculation, Plaintiffs seek up to $71.4 million* in statutory damages, the maximum allowed if willful infringement is proven.
This is the 10th copyright suit against Anthropic. And it is the 118th lawsuit against AI companies in the United States.
Shakespeare’s theory of the case is based on the Bartz v. Anthropic decision, which framed Anthropic’s initial torrenting of unlicensed works from online libraries to build a central library as a separate use from Anthropic’s later training of its model. Even though the Bartz court found Anthropic’s use of works to train its model was fair use, the court ruled that the library building use did not fall within fair use on the record for summary judgment and should go to trial. But before there was a trial, Anthropic settled.
Shakespeare’s complaint focuses on this initial torrenting and putative library building, while suggesting in passing that the training would not be fair use (contra the decision in Bartz).
*Corrected.
Excerpt:
DOWNLOAD THE COMPLAINT
