AI Copyright Litigation Has Left Theory Behind

The Bartz v. Anthropic settlement did not close the author litigation — it opened the pricing conversation. A per-title figure applied across hundreds of thousands of works gives plaintiffs' attorneys in every subsequent case a concrete anchor, and the UMG complaint's $3 billion valuation ^[2] reflects exactly that logic: take the settlement rate, multiply by catalog size, add a premium for commercial scale. The labs that hoped settlements would reduce litigation pressure are discovering that the first settlement created the template the next plaintiff uses to justify going to trial…