Artificial Intelligence
Anthropic Wins US Copyright Lawsuit As It Braces For Amazon's Project Rainier
Updated on Wed, Jun 25, 2025
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As the world of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) keeps growing, artificial intelligence (AI) companies find themselves requiring more and more data to train their models on.
For this, they turn to various sources, including the internet, social media platforms, news websites, blogs, and more. Another source that provides developers with exceptionally good, quality, and curated content is books.
Apart from informative, non-fiction books, AI tools can benefit from fictional novels that offer diverse and creative writing styles, powered by a wide range of perspectives.
This is one avenue that AI startup Anthropic opted for when it decided to train its large language models (LLMs) using books.
However, that decision didn’t play out too well for the company—initially.
See, Anthropic got sued by a host of authors who claimed the company used pirated versions of their books, along with hundreds of thousands of others, to train its AI chatbot Claude.
The class action lawsuit was filed on August 19, 2024, by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson.
“Anthropic has built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books,” reads an excerpt from the filing. “Rather than obtaining permission and paying a fair price for the creations it exploits, Anthropic pirated them. Authors spend years conceiving, writing, and pursuing publication of their copyrighted material.”
Over time, Anthropic was said to have shelled out millions of dollars to purchase millions of print books, often in used condition, which were stripped from their bindings and scanned into digital form and stored in a PDF format with machine-readable text.
In this way, Anthropic built a “central library" of more than 7 million books.
Fast forward to almost a year later, where United States District Judge William Alsup (San Francisco) partially ruled in favor of Anthropic, in an order dated June 23, 2025.
The judge said that Anthropic’s use of the books without prior permission to train its models was legal under U.S. copyright law, and that the company’s print-to-digital conversion was fair.
“This order grants summary judgment for Anthropic that the training use was a fair use,” reads an excerpt from the order. “And, it grants that the print-to-digital format change was a fair use for a different reason.”
However, the judge did not absolve Anthropic for copying and storing over 7 million pirated books in its “central library,” noting that it infringed the authors' copyrights and was not fair use.
As such, there will be a trial to determine the resulting damages accruing from Anthropic’s “central library.”
The trial to decide how much Anthropic will pay for the infringement is expected to begin in December. However, the judge also said that Anthropic buying a copy of a pirated book “may affect the extent of statutory damages,” but “will not absolve it of liability for the theft.”
The court also said it wasn’t making a decision—one way or another—about whether making or using copies from library materials is legal, as long as it’s not for training large language models, with the question still remaining open for future legal arguments.
As per U.S. copyright law, affected parties are entitled to statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work in the case of willful copyright infringement.
Anthropic isn’t the only AI company embroiled in lawsuits that allege copyright infringements, as OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, and others have faced legal challenges from news publishers and other content creators.
All of this comes as Anthropic gears up to leverage the power of Amazon’s Project Rainier.
According to Amazon, Project Rainier is a massive one-of-a-kind machine that aims to usher in the next generation of AI, consisting of an AI “compute cluster” that will connect hundreds of thousands of Trainium 2 chips across multiple data centers in the U.S.
Fun fact: The project is named after Mount Rainier—the 14,410-foot (4,392-meter) stratovolcano—located near Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington.
Over time, Amazon has invested around $8 billion in Anthropic, with a $4 billion investment in September 2023, and an additional $2.75 billion in March 2024.
Fun fact: Anthropic also holds an over $3 billion investment from Google, which includes previous investments of $2 billion, an additional $1 billion in January 2025, and a $750 million investment planned for September 2025.
Coming back to Project Rainier, the new brand-new “AI compute cluster” will enable Anthropic to build and deploy future versions of its leading AI model, Claude.
“Rainier will provide five times more computing power compared to Anthropic’s current largest training cluster,” said Gadi Hutt, director of product and customer engineering at Annapurna Labs, the chip company Amazon acquired in 2015.
Annapurna Labs is the powerhouse that designed and developed the Trainium2, a custom AWS (Amazon Web Services) computer chip built specifically for training AI systems that is capable of completing trillions of calculations per second.
One of Project Rainier’s locations includes a 1,200-acre sprawling data center campus built on farmland outside New Carlisle, Indiana, which is expected to consume 2.2 gigawatts of electricity. In place of using millions of gallons of water to cool the powerful chips throughout the year, this data center will use outside air for cooling.
While October to March won’t see any use of water, April to September will include the use of cooling water for a few hours per day.
This location was built considering a single customer—Anthropic.
In April 2024, Amazon announced an investment of $11 billion in the state, marking the largest capital investment in the state’s history. The move is set to generate 1,000 new jobs, adding to the already 26,000 full-time and part-time jobs the company created in the state, once launched.
Other locations for Project Rainier will include facilities in Mississippi and could extend to North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
As for energy efficiency, the company has been partnering with energy companies to leverage nuclear power to power its hungry data centers.
Meta, Microsoft, Google, and even the U.S. government are making similar moves, in a bid to turn to renewable energy.
Do you think Amazon’s data center will help Anthropic boost its AI ambitions? Do you think AI companies should be exempt from copyright laws, or should they be held to similar standards, just as the rest of the corporate world?
Let us know in the comments below!
For this, they turn to various sources, including the internet, social media platforms, news websites, blogs, and more. Another source that provides developers with exceptionally good, quality, and curated content is books.
Apart from informative, non-fiction books, AI tools can benefit from fictional novels that offer diverse and creative writing styles, powered by a wide range of perspectives.
This is one avenue that AI startup Anthropic opted for when it decided to train its large language models (LLMs) using books.
However, that decision didn’t play out too well for the company—initially.
See, Anthropic got sued by a host of authors who claimed the company used pirated versions of their books, along with hundreds of thousands of others, to train its AI chatbot Claude.
The class action lawsuit was filed on August 19, 2024, by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson.
“Anthropic has built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books,” reads an excerpt from the filing. “Rather than obtaining permission and paying a fair price for the creations it exploits, Anthropic pirated them. Authors spend years conceiving, writing, and pursuing publication of their copyrighted material.”
Over time, Anthropic was said to have shelled out millions of dollars to purchase millions of print books, often in used condition, which were stripped from their bindings and scanned into digital form and stored in a PDF format with machine-readable text.
In this way, Anthropic built a “central library" of more than 7 million books.
Fast forward to almost a year later, where United States District Judge William Alsup (San Francisco) partially ruled in favor of Anthropic, in an order dated June 23, 2025.
The judge said that Anthropic’s use of the books without prior permission to train its models was legal under U.S. copyright law, and that the company’s print-to-digital conversion was fair.
“This order grants summary judgment for Anthropic that the training use was a fair use,” reads an excerpt from the order. “And, it grants that the print-to-digital format change was a fair use for a different reason.”
However, the judge did not absolve Anthropic for copying and storing over 7 million pirated books in its “central library,” noting that it infringed the authors' copyrights and was not fair use.
As such, there will be a trial to determine the resulting damages accruing from Anthropic’s “central library.”
The trial to decide how much Anthropic will pay for the infringement is expected to begin in December. However, the judge also said that Anthropic buying a copy of a pirated book “may affect the extent of statutory damages,” but “will not absolve it of liability for the theft.”
The court also said it wasn’t making a decision—one way or another—about whether making or using copies from library materials is legal, as long as it’s not for training large language models, with the question still remaining open for future legal arguments.
As per U.S. copyright law, affected parties are entitled to statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work in the case of willful copyright infringement.
Anthropic isn’t the only AI company embroiled in lawsuits that allege copyright infringements, as OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, and others have faced legal challenges from news publishers and other content creators.
All of this comes as Anthropic gears up to leverage the power of Amazon’s Project Rainier.
According to Amazon, Project Rainier is a massive one-of-a-kind machine that aims to usher in the next generation of AI, consisting of an AI “compute cluster” that will connect hundreds of thousands of Trainium 2 chips across multiple data centers in the U.S.
Fun fact: The project is named after Mount Rainier—the 14,410-foot (4,392-meter) stratovolcano—located near Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington.
Over time, Amazon has invested around $8 billion in Anthropic, with a $4 billion investment in September 2023, and an additional $2.75 billion in March 2024.
Fun fact: Anthropic also holds an over $3 billion investment from Google, which includes previous investments of $2 billion, an additional $1 billion in January 2025, and a $750 million investment planned for September 2025.
Coming back to Project Rainier, the new brand-new “AI compute cluster” will enable Anthropic to build and deploy future versions of its leading AI model, Claude.
“Rainier will provide five times more computing power compared to Anthropic’s current largest training cluster,” said Gadi Hutt, director of product and customer engineering at Annapurna Labs, the chip company Amazon acquired in 2015.
Annapurna Labs is the powerhouse that designed and developed the Trainium2, a custom AWS (Amazon Web Services) computer chip built specifically for training AI systems that is capable of completing trillions of calculations per second.
One of Project Rainier’s locations includes a 1,200-acre sprawling data center campus built on farmland outside New Carlisle, Indiana, which is expected to consume 2.2 gigawatts of electricity. In place of using millions of gallons of water to cool the powerful chips throughout the year, this data center will use outside air for cooling.
While October to March won’t see any use of water, April to September will include the use of cooling water for a few hours per day.
This location was built considering a single customer—Anthropic.
In April 2024, Amazon announced an investment of $11 billion in the state, marking the largest capital investment in the state’s history. The move is set to generate 1,000 new jobs, adding to the already 26,000 full-time and part-time jobs the company created in the state, once launched.
Other locations for Project Rainier will include facilities in Mississippi and could extend to North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
As for energy efficiency, the company has been partnering with energy companies to leverage nuclear power to power its hungry data centers.
Meta, Microsoft, Google, and even the U.S. government are making similar moves, in a bid to turn to renewable energy.
Do you think Amazon’s data center will help Anthropic boost its AI ambitions? Do you think AI companies should be exempt from copyright laws, or should they be held to similar standards, just as the rest of the corporate world?
Let us know in the comments below!
First published on Wed, Jun 25, 2025
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