July 17 2025 (Reuters) - A California federal judge ruled on Thursday that three authors suing artificial intelligence startup Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent writers nationwide whose books Anthropic allegedly pirated to train its AI system.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the authors can bring a class action, opens new tab on behalf of all U.S. writers whose works Anthropic allegedly downloaded from "pirate libraries" LibGen and PiLiMi to create a repository of millions of books in 2021 and 2022.
20250717加州聯邦法官星期四裁准對人工智能新創公司Anthropic提起侵害著作權訴訟的三位作家可代表全國作家（此3位本為當事人；法官裁准此3位可為全國作家起訴及其他訴訟行為），而這些作家的著作被Anthropic剽竊用來訓練伊等旗下人工智能。美國聯邦地區法院法官William Alsup說道：該3位著作人可提起集體訴訟；成為那些著作宣稱被Anthropic於LiGen與PiLiMi下載從而在2021及2022年間成立數百萬書籍之書庫之美國作家代表，此為美國著作權訴訟開啟了新篇章。

The case is one of several high-stakes lawsuits brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright owners against companies including OpenAI, Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab and Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab over their AI training.

AI companies argue their systems make fair use of copyrighted material to create new, transformative content. Alsup determined in June that Anthropic's AI training made fair use of authors' works, but said the company still violated their rights by saving pirated copies of their books to a "central library of all the books in the world" that would not necessarily be used for AI training.

Alsup said on Thursday the three authors could represent all writers whose books Anthropic allegedly downloaded from LibGen and PiLiMi, rejecting Anthropic's argument that identifying all of the copyright-eligible works and their authors would be impractical.