United States District Court judge William Alsup just released an important decision in the AI copyright litigation in Bartz v Anthropic PBC. He summarized his ruling as follows:
- The use of the books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act.
- The digitization of the books purchased in print form by Anthropic was also a fair use …because all Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies.
- Anthropic had no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library. Creating a permanent, general-purpose library was not itself a fair use excusing Anthropic’s piracy.
The court did not rule on whether downloading works from a pirate site could be a fair use if used for training purposes.
Judge Alsup’s conclusion sets out the order to be issued in the case:
With respect to the training copies and the print-to-digital converted copies, this order has drawn all ambiguities and inferences in favor of the opposing side, namely Authors.
With respect to the pirated copies, this order has also accepted the Authors’ version of the facts. Authors did not move for summary judgment but if they had, then we would have been obligated to accept all reasonable views given the evidence in defendant’s favor instead.
This order grants summary judgment for Anthropic that the training use was a fair use. And, it grants that the print-to-digital format change was a fair use for a different reason. But it denies summary judgment for Anthropic that the pirated library copies must be treated as training copies.
We will have a trial on the pirated copies used to create Anthropic’s central library and the resulting damages, actual or statutory (including for willfulness). That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft but it may affect the extent of statutory damages. Nothing is foreclosed as to any other copies flowing from library copies for uses other than for training LLMs.
This decision is bound to be appealed. So stay tuned.
