Good News for Anthropic Class Claimants

As you may know, the settlement last September of the copyright infringement case of Bartz, et al. v. Anthropic BPC resulted in the largest award in a copyright infringement case in the history of the United States – a $1.5 billion settlement fund to be distributed to the owners of approximately 500,000 works included in the Class.

Out of this $1.5 billion fund, Class counsel was to be paid. The fee request noted in the original long-form notice to potential claimants was 25% of the Settlement Fund ($375 million), subsequently reduced by Class counsel to 20% of the fund ($300 million). But on March 19, 2026, in response to concerns raised by the Court and to challenges raised by a very small number of commenters, Class counsel reduced its fee request to 12.5% of the Settlement Fund ($187.5 million).

A contingent fee of 25% is considered by many to be a benchmark in class action cases. But in so-called “megafund” cases (those involving recoveries of over $100 million), courts often apply a lower percentage, based on five factors:

1. Exceptional Result – Anthropic resulted in the largest copyright class actions settlement in history
2. Risks of Litigation – Anthropic involved multiple issues of first impression, including the application of the fair use doctrine to generative AI ingestion and class certification in an AI case.
3. Skill and Quality of the Work – Class counsel diligently pursued discovery that dramatically expanded the class; succeeded in obtaining the first ever class certification in an AI copyright action; defeated summary judgment on Anthropic’s mass downloading from pirate websites; fought off a host of efforts to delay or avoid trial; and proposed, developed, and administered a complex settlement.
4. Contingent Nature of the Representation – Class counsel litigated this novel and complex case entirely on a contingency basis, devoting over 27,629 hours and investing millions of dollars in time, costs, and expenses with no assurance of compensation or reimbursement.
5. Market rates for Similar Cases – 12.5% falls below the market for individual copyright cases against AI companies.

This proposed reduction in the Class counsel fee comes with less than a week left before the March 30 deadline for filing claims, so it is unlikely to impact claims yet unfiled. But it is welcome news for class claimants nonetheless.