Bartz v. Anthropic Settlement Update: New Date and Time for the Fairness Hearing (you can join online) and Unsealed Objections

On April 8, Judge Martínez-Olguín issued an order to move the Bartz v. Anthropic settlement fairness hearing to May 14, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. 

Class members who have timely objected and wish to be heard may join the hearing via the Zoom log-in information found on page 2 of the order.  

Participants are advised to log-in early to avoid any capacity or connectivity issues.

For anyone who might want to attend in person, the hearing will be on May 14, 2026, at 2:00 PT at the San Francisco Federal Courthouse, 450 Golden Gate Ave., Courtroom 12 – 19th Floor.

In response to a motion from objector Professor Lea Victoria Bishop, Judge Martínez-Olguín also ordered that Professor Bishop’s objection and those of other objectors be unsealed. This has been done and the objections can be found in the docket. We are glad to see this increased transparency around objections to the settlement; class members deserve to know what other authors found troubling about this settlement before the court decides whether to approve it.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of what appear to be the most common objections found in those documents (I’ve provided a link to an objection for each as an example and reference; given that there will often be more than one objection filed raising many of these issues, these links to individual objection filings are not meant to capture all associated objections):  

1. Exclusion of foreign/non-US-registered works from the class [Doc 630 (Dkt. 630), pp. 5-7]. 

In her objection, Professor Bishop notes that foreign/non-US works need not register copyright in the United States in order to file suit and that this group could represent over 2 million works, a significant large-scale exclusion from the class.  

2. Distribution plan systematically favors publishers over authors (the claims-made process that burdens authors and benefits publishers, the arbitration mechanism that disadvantages authors post-settlement, and the presumption that publishers share in authors’ recovery) [Doc 630 (Dkt. 630), pp. 2-6]

For a lawsuit that was brought by authors ostensibly for authors, it’s true that publishers are likely to benefit substantially from this settlement. Professor Bishop notes that ultimately publishers could claim roughly 50% or more of the total settlement amount, which is a profound departure from an author-centric lawsuit.  

“Even if 60% of works have been claimed, it may be the case that 55% were claimed by publishers and only 5% by authors. The court may wish to consider scrutinizing data on the percentage of authors that have submitted claims. It is particularly concerning that the distribution plan fails to dedicate unclaimed amounts to escheating or charity. Instead, amounts not claimed by authors can be collected by publishers.” (Objection at 5)

3. Misleading/coercive class notice, specifically the “get nothing” framing that obscures the opt-out value (potential statutory damages of up to $150,000/work vs. ~$3,000/work in the settlement) [Doc 571 (Dkt. 571), pp. 1-4]

The objection raised here is that the class notice did a poor job of making class members aware of their other options, instead leading some class members to believe that the choice was between accepting the settlement or “getting nothing.” 

4. Inadequate compensation relative to the actual scope of infringement and statutory damages available [Doc 571 (Dkt. 571), p. 2]

Statutory damages per infringement can technically be up to $150,000/work, so this objection is based on a view that the settlement amount per work is woefully inadequate compared to that possibility. 

5. Class notice not received / received too late to meet the opt-out deadline [Doc 635 (Dkt. 635)]

“The “Notice of $1.5 Billion Proposed Class Action Settlement Between Authors & Publishers and Anthropic PBC” was not received by Objector Esquivel until approximately March 3, 2026, almost a full month after the deadline to opt out of the class settlement had expired.” 

6. Inadequate representation / Class Counsel conflicts of interest (Judge Alsup’s December 2025 concerns about fee-sharing concealed from incoming judge) [Doc 630 (Dkt. 630), pp. 2-4]

Here, Professor Bishop takes issue with an apparent exclusion of some of Judge Alsup’s concerns from updates to Judge Martínez-Olguín (“Class Counsel’s omission of this record from its January 2026 Status Update and March 2026 Motion to Approve is not an oversight. It is an affirmative misrepresentation of the record to mislead the incoming judge.”)

7. Group copyright registration undercounting (multiple distinct books collapsed into one “claimable work” when registered under a single group registration) [Doc 641 (Dkt. 641), pp. 1-5]

“Yet under the settlement’s methodology, all 40+ of these books are collapsed into a single “claimable Work” simply because I used a single group copyright registration number. The result is that I am compensated as if Anthropic infringed one book, when in fact Anthropic downloaded and used the content of over forty of my books to train its AI model.”

8. Settlement sets a dangerous precedent by allowing an AI company to escape liability for mass infringement at a steep discount [Doc 640 (Dkt. 640), p. 1]

“This settlement allows a multi-billion dollar AI company to “buy” its way out of massive piracy for a “discounted” rate, setting a dangerous precedent that it is cheaper to steal human IP and settle later than to license it fairly.”