As the September 1 deadline nears to submit books for consideration in the class action lawsuit against AI company Anthropic, the Authors Guild is advising its members to send their contact information and book titles to Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, the court-appointed class counsel for authors.
The Guild notes that while authors do not need to do anything to be a member of the class, they should register with the law firm to ensure that they receive notices relating to their participation in the suit, including the opportunity to opt out if they so wish.
In its post, the Guild advises authors who believe pirated copies of their books may have been unlawfully downloaded by Anthropic to provide the requested information and “to share the website with any other authors you know.”
According to the Guild, if the class action is successful, statutory damages range from $750 per title up to a maximum of $150,000 per title. Since approximately seven million titles are believed to have been illegally copied by Anthropic, the company could face billions of dollars in damages if it loses at trial.
In July, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that three writers suing Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent all other authors whose books the AI company allegedly pirated to train its AI model as part of a class action lawsuit. That ruling followed Alsup’s decision that found Anthropic’s training of its Claude LLMs on authors' works was "exceedingly transformative," and protected by fair use, but that its practice of downloading pirated books was not covered by fair use.
A December 1, 2025 trial date has been set to hear the case.
