Publishers and agents are claiming money from the Anthropic copyright settlement that may not be theirs
Authors who expected a $3,000 payout per pirated book are finding publishers claiming rights they lost years ago, and literary agents grabbing percentages they were never entitled to.
Key points
- Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, reached a $1.5 billion copyright settlement with authors whose books were used to train its AI without permission.
- Under the settlement, authors receive $3,000 per pirated title, split 50-50 with publishers for books still in print, or kept in full by the author if rights reverted.
- Multiple authors report publishers claiming payment on books whose rights reverted to authors as far back as 17 years ago.
- Literary agents, who own no publishing rights, are also reportedly filing payment claims.
- Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger says this looks like widespread record-keeping failures rather than deliberate theft.
Authors expecting a clean payout from a landmark AI copyright case are instead fighting off claims from publishers and agents who may have no legal right to the money.
The background: Anthropic settled a class-action lawsuit brought by authors whose books were used, without permission, to train its AI models. A judge ruled that training AI on copyrighted books is legal under "fair use" (a legal doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without payment), but that pirating those books in the first place was not. The settlement received final court approval in July 2025.
How is the money supposed to work?
Every author whose book appeared in the pirated data gets $3,000 per title. If a traditional publisher still holds the rights, author and publisher split it equally. If the author self-published, or if the publisher returned ("reverted") the rights by letting the book go out of print, the author keeps everything.
Simple enough in theory. Messy in practice.
So what actually went wrong?
Publishers are claiming payments they are not entitled to. Mystery author April Henry posted publicly that HarperCollins claimed one of her books whose rights had reverted at least 17 years ago. On the same day, HarperCollins was added to a credit-monitoring service as her employer, which she said was never true.
Victoria Strauss, writing at the author-advocacy blog Writers Beware, described two recurring problems: publishers claiming books whose rights they no longer hold, and publishers filing for a full 100% payment instead of their rightful 50%. She noted that some publishers have already told Anthropic the claims were errors and asked for corrections.
Beyond publishers, literary agents are also filing claims. That surprised Strauss, because agents sell books on behalf of authors but never own the rights themselves. Author Courtney Milan (the pen name of former law professor Heidi Bond) put it bluntly in a Bluesky post: agents claiming percentages of the settlement should "stop that shit."
The Authors Guild CEO, Mary Rasenberger, told TechCrunch AI the errors look like a record-keeping problem at scale, not a coordinated grab. "I don't believe publishers are specifically trying to screw any author over," she said. But Strauss noted the sheer volume of identical complaints arriving within 48 hours suggests something more systemic than routine administrative glitches.
What should authors do now?
Authors can formally dispute any incorrect payment claim. One detail matters enormously: to claim 100% of a payment, the rights to that book must have reverted before August 10, 2022, the date Anthropic downloaded the pirated material. Rights that reverted after that date may still qualify for a split payment, so authors should check the exact date carefully before filing a dispute.
The Authors Guild has published guidance on how to challenge a claim through the settlement process.
