Alsup Slams Anthropic’s Request to Delay AI Copyright Trial

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge William Alsup on Monday denied Anthropic’s motion to stay proceedings in Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC. Anthropic had sought to pause the case while pursuing appellate review of two rulings, one on fair use and the other on class certification. The order maintains the trial date set for December 1, 2025, and says the case proceedings must continue.

Anthropic had requested in July that the court certify the partial denial of its summary judgment motion for interlocutory appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). Following its loss on class certification, the company also petitioned for review under Rule 23(f). Anthropic requested that the court stay proceedings while the appellate courts considered these filings.

Judge Alsup said that proceeding with trial and class notice does not prevent appellate review, and that the Ninth Circuit could complete its Rule 23(f) review before the trial begins.

The underlying copyright lawsuit was filed in August 2024 by journalists and book authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson against Anthropic, alleging that Anthropic’s widespread copyright infringement involves “hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books” from unauthorized sources used to train Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot.

In Monday’s order, Judge Alsup identified several critical factual issues requiring full trial development. The court emphasized that “the machinations of Anthropic’s downloading of pirate libraries and its deployment of bit-torrenting to do so looms large in this case and should be fully before the jury, district judge, and court of appeals.”

Anthropic prevailed partially on summary judgment concerning some fair use issues; however, the court noted that there are remaining questions regarding the company’s handling of pirated library copies. The court found that while many books were downloaded from unauthorized sources, some copies were used to train the Claude AI chatbot, and other copies were retained without being used. Judge Alsup wrote that these issues must be resolved at trial to establish a complete factual record concerning the use and retention of pirated works for appellate review.

The court also addressed whether Anthropic’s “library-building” was at issue, noting that the distinction between collecting works and using them for AI training is a factual matter for trial. The plaintiffs had contended that downloading from unauthorized sources constituted a standalone infringement separate from transformative use for training purposes. Anthropic even described “…its ‘collection’ of works as a factually distinct step preceding even the ‘[p]retraining’ process for training LLMs.” Alsup’s order said that the record demonstrates Anthropic built a research library for multiple purposes, including but not limited to training AI.

The record shows that Anthropic still has not identified which pirated works were actually used for AI training, Alsup said. The court emphasized that Anthropic “has been unable or unwilling to say which of the pirated works were actually used to train LLMs” and suggested it is “entirely possible that only a small subset of the pirated works was ever so used.”

He also noted inconsistencies in Anthropic’s legal theories during oral argument. In response to a question about “whether anyone could really pirate a book just because he purports to want to write a book review on Amazon, maybe now or maybe someday,” Anthropic’s counsel acknowledged that “you can’t just bless yourself by saying I have a research purpose and, therefore, go and take any textbook you want.”

But this conflicts with the “sweeping rule” Alsup said Anthropic is proposing “that Anthropic was entitled to pirate all the copyrighted works it wanted and to keep them indefinitely so long as any part of the trove was further copied and used to train an LLM.” Such a rule cannot be reconciled with the third statutory fair use factor on the amount and substantiality of the portion used, Alsup added.

With respect to class certification, Anthropic suggested the judge is rushing the case because he’s set to retire by the end of this year, but Alsup said “[k]eeping a case on track is not the same as rushing the case to trial.” Furthermore, Anthropic’s own data on the Ninth Circuit’s average schedule times demonstrates that it’s possible the appellate court might conclude its Rule 23(f) review before trial.

Alsup also considered Anthropic’s claims of potential irreparable harm, which suggested that proceeding without a stay could threaten the entire company’s business and require a substantial appeal bond. Judge Alsup called this a “doomsday calculation” and said that it “piles assumption upon assumption,” rejecting such claims as speculative. Anthropic could prevail at trial and any damages or bond would simply correspond to the extent of any wrongdoing, Alsup said, noting: “[I]f Anthropic loses big it will be because what it did wrong was also big.”

The jointly proposed notice form and schedule remain due on August 15, and the plaintiffs’ proposed class list is due on September 1. The court emphasized that class notice and trial preparation should continue in parallel with pending appeals.

Image Source: Deposit Photos
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Author: T.Schneider