Story perspectives

Anthropic Pays $1.5 B Settlement After Book-Scanning Fair-Use Ruling

8/1/2026

Summary

Story summary

Anthropic bought millions of books, cut spines, scanned and destroyed them in “Project Panama” with Datamation Information Services.
A federal judge deemed the scanning transformative fair use, prompting Anthropic to settle the class-action for $1.5 billion.
ISBNdb marketed bulk-book orders to AI labs, while a 3,001-ISBN request to Dutch seller Pieter de Vries spurred European dealers to report a fivefold rise in rare-book sales since April, fearing loss of scarce titles.

History

Historical Context

After the Authors Guild and publishers sued Google in 2005 over its Library Project, the Southern District of New York ruled in November 2013 that scanning millions of books was a transformative fair-use, a view upheld on appeal in 2015. Google’s database now holds about 25 million titles, a model Anthropic copied for its 2024 Project Panama.

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Story summary

Anthropic bought millions of books, cut spines, scanned and destroyed them in “Project Panama” with Datamation Information Services.
A federal judge deemed the scanning transformative fair use, prompting Anthropic to settle the class-action for $1.5 billion.
ISBNdb marketed bulk-book orders to AI labs, while a 3,001-ISBN request to Dutch seller Pieter de Vries spurred European dealers to report a fivefold rise in rare-book sales since April, fearing loss of scarce titles.

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