Publishers and literary agents are filing claims in the settlement portal over rights-reverted works and 100% author payments, sparking disputes about who should receive funds, with major publishers such as HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Kensington, and Baen named in the cases.

Agents are also involved in disputes, as some are seeking commissions from settlement payments even though they are not rights holders in the works.

Publishers are allegedly attempting to claim payments on titles they no longer hold or on titles where authors would receive full 100% under the settlement, prompting pushback from authors.

The Anthropic settlement follows a court ruling that training AI on copyrighted material is fair use, while pirating that material is not; final settlement approval came in July 2026, with payments to begin after approval.

First payments are scheduled on or before November 15, 2026, from a settlement fund of about $1.083 billion, with an average per-work payment around $2,203.56, potentially rising above $3,000 after a later $450 million payment in September 2027.

The settlement covers roughly 482,000 eligible works drawn largely from shadow libraries; rights holders can receive a 50/50 split for in-print titles with traditional publishers, while self-published or rights-reverted works allow authors to claim all of it.

The broader question emerges of who deserves compensation in the AI era, noting ongoing cases from other rights holders like Getty Images and The New York Times against AI firms over training data and highlighting the systemic challenges of distributing settlements.

The settlement administrator has begun notices detailing claimants and requested percentages; disputes will be resolved first through portal-based contests, with unresolved cases sent to a court-appointed special master for final decisions.

Key dispute-cutoff dates include the August 10, 2022 download date to determine rights reverted before that date for 100% author claims, with authors able to challenge allocations using guidance from the Authors Guild.

Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger says the issues reflect confusing processes and recordkeeping, not necessarily deliberate publisher malice, underscoring the scale and complexity of the settlement.

The settlement framework pays about $3,000 per pirated work; when a title is in print with a traditional publisher, the payment is split 50/50 between author and publisher, while self-published or rights-reverted works go entirely to the author.

Anthropic reached a $1.5 billion settlement with authors for pirated works used to build Claude, described as the largest copyright recovery in U.S. history, with final court approval granted on July 20, 2026.