Industry Insider – Anthropic settlement

What does the Anthropic settlement mean to you?

This is your chance to find out the implications for authors in the UK and what action you can take.

Join the US attorneys Jallé H. Dafa and Michael Adamson in conversation with SoA General Counsel Keith Ashby.

They will discuss the background to the U.S. action; the route by which settlement terms were reached; practical considerations for U.K. authorsand the possible implications for other actions which are being brought in the U.S. against AI companies. There will be plenty of time for Q&A.

This is a unique opportunity to get your questions answered so please send us your questions in advance so the lawyers can respond in the webinar.  

Please email your question to publicaffairs@societyofauthors.org and include ‘Anthropic Settlement Townhall’ in the subject header.

• Register for free now 
• Send us your questions in advance 

Send us your questions

Please send your questions in advance to publicaffairs@societyofauthors.org and include ‘Anthropic Settlement Townhall’ in the subject header. We will also endeavour to answer as many questions as we can from the audience on the day.

Programme

• Welcome, introductions and housekeeping from Keith Asby – General Counsel, SoA (3 mins)
• Panel discussion with Jallé H. Dafa, Michael Adamson and Keith Ashby (20 mins)
• Q&A with questions about the proceedings/the settlement submitted in advance (20 mins)
• Q&A with audience (15 mins)
• Summary and closing comments (2 mins)
• This event will be moderated by Ambre Morvan – Senior Policy and Public Affairs Manager and Contracts Advisor, SoA

What will this session cover?

• What this settlement means for UK authors
• What the implications of this settlement are for the other actions being brought in the U.S. against AI companies

Who is this session for? 

Anyone who has an interest in the Anthropic settlement and what it means for UK authors.

Specifically, this session will be of interest to those whose works have been used by AI tech companies, and those who are hoping to make a claim against Anthropic in their settlement.

The Line up

Keith Ashby | SoA

Keith Ashby is General Counsel of the Society of Authors, having joined in 2024.

Jallé H. Dafa | Partner, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP

Jallé H. Dafa represents consumers and workers in high-stakes class action litigation.

A partner in Lieff Cabraser’s San Francisco office, Jallé has prosecuted several winning cases. She represented professors against Duke University and the University of North Carolina for conspiring to suppress the mobility and pay of their faculty. The litigation settled for a total of $73.5 million and significant injunctive relief.

Jallé has litigated against AT&T for charging hidden fees, Allstate for price discrimination in auto insurance premiums, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Natera for using a defective solution during the testing of irreplaceable human embryos, and Kaiser Permanente for racially discriminating against Black employees. She also successfully challenged the Trump Administration’s unlawful decision to withhold COVID-19 CARES Act stimulus relief from incarcerated Americans and their families. The district court granted summary judgment and entered a permanent injunction ordering the government to terminate its policy, resulting in $1.5 billion in economic impact payments to plaintiffs.

Michael Adamson | Partner, Susman Godfrey

Trial lawyer Michael Adamson has been recognized by Daily Journal as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California (2025) and a Top 40 Lawyer Under 40 (2022), by Law.com as a Lawyer on the Fast Track (2025), and by National Law Journal as a Plaintiff’s Attorney Trailblazer (2023). Michael is a versatile litigator representing plaintiffs and defendants in arbitrations and federal and state courts across the country.

In a “historic” copyright infringement action, Adamson and a team from Susman Godfrey secured a $1.5 billion settlement for rightsholders whose books were downloaded by Anthropic from pirated databases “Library Genesis” and “Pirate Library Mirror.” This settlement is the largest publicly reported recovery in the history of U.S. copyright litigation. When preliminarily approving the settlement, Judge Alsup said, “We have some of the best lawyers in America in the courtroom right now.” Read more in Bloomberg and Law.com

Need to know

Accessibility

• Attendees will have the option to turn on the live transcript, to watch with subtitles.
• If you require BSL interpretation for this event, please email events@societyofauthors.org

Before the event

• Once registered, you will be sent a confirmation email with the Zoom link
• If the confirmation email doesn’t arrive in your inbox, please check your junk/spam email folder
• Please add events@societyofauthors.org to your Safe Senders list so you receive our confirmation and reminder emails

During the event

• This online event will take place on Zoom Webinar. You will not be on screen.
• This event is 60 minutes

After the event

• Hashtag for this event: #SoAatHome
• Attendees will be able to catch the recording on our Vimeo channel

Register your place

Register your place using the form below.