Shakespeare v. Anthropic PBC

What this case is about

The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic unlawfully used copyrighted written works to train its artificial intelligence systems without obtaining permission from the copyright holders or providing any compensation. The lawsuit claims that Anthropic scraped and ingested large volumes of protected creative and literary content to build and improve its AI models, including its Claude assistant, in violation of federal copyright law. The proposed class is expected to include authors, writers, and other copyright holders whose original works were allegedly copied and used without authorization during the development and training of Anthropic's AI products. The plaintiffs seek damages and other relief for what they characterize as large-scale infringement of their intellectual property rights.

What happens next

The case is in its earliest stage. The defendant has not yet responded. Class certification — the court's decision on whether the case can proceed as a class action — typically takes 12 to 24 months after filing.

Source: CourtListener docket entry. This summary was generated automatically and may not reflect subsequent filings.