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Anthropic's $1.5 billion offer to settle a copyright lawsuit brought by authors has yet to be finalized. Judge William Alsup has denied the motion to approve the deal after finding some important claim details missing.
"The district judge is disappointed that counsel have left important questions to be answered in the future, including respecting the Works List, the Class List, the Claim Form, and, particularly for works with multiple claimants, the processes for notification… allocation, and dispute resolution," Alsup wrote in an order filed before Monday's hearing.
As Bloomberg Law reports, Alsup is concerned that the attorneys will stop caring once the monetary relief is approved. Therefore, he has asked the authors' counsel to provide a "very good notice" to the writers, give them the option to opt in or out, and ensure they know they can't go after Anthropic over the same issue again.
In the class-action filed last year, authors claimed Anthropic used pirated versions of their books, without permission or compensation, to train the company's AI models. Anthropic decided to settle the case last month, with the final amount revealed last week.
According to Bloomberg Law, Alsup has given the involved parties until Sept. 15 to submit a full list of works eligible for the $1.5 billion payout. That could be around 465,000 works, with each yielding close to $3,000.
In addition to the works list, attorneys have been asked to get the class list and claim form for authors approved by the court by Oct. 10. Only after that will a preliminary approval of the settlement be sanctioned.
At the hearing, Alsup also criticized the authors' counsel for assigning an "army" of lawyers to the case. The add-on lawyers won't get a piece of the settlement, and the attorneys' total payout will be decided based on the payout to class members, he added.
Maria A. Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, says the court "demonstrated a lack of understanding of how the publishing industry works" and "seems to be envisioning a claims process that would be unworkable, and sees a world with collateral litigation between authors and publishers for years to come."
A similar lawsuit alleging the use of pirated books for AI training was filed against Apple last week.