By Mike Scarcella

WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Anthropic is urging a federal judge to slash a proposed $300 million legal fee award for lawyers representing authors in a $1.5 billion copyright class action settlement with the artificial intelligence company, arguing there is “scant justification” for a large chunk of the fees.

In a court filing on Wednesday, Anthropic said three law firms — Edelson, Oppenheim + Zebrak and Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard — were seeking $75 million for themselves but played less significant roles than the lead attorneys who are representing authors and publishers in the litigation.

Anthropic agreed to the landmark settlement in October to resolve claims that it trained its AI models on hundreds of thousands of pirated books. The company also agreed to destroy pirated datasets and certify that those works were not used in its commercial AI models like Claude.

The lead plaintiffs’ attorneys at law firms Susman Godfrey and Lieff Cabraser have asked the federal court in California to award them $225 million in legal fees. Anthropic’s new filing did not suggest an exact award for those firms, but the company said the requested amount — based on a 20% cut from the settlement fund — could be seen as an inappropriate “windfall.”

Anthropic declined to comment, and lead attorneys representing class members did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Anthropic denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to settle the lawsuit.

Edelson and Oppenheim + Zebrak served as “coordinating counsel,” working with the lead attorneys. Cowan DeBaets appeared as one of the firms on the lawsuit. Anthropic, in its filing, said that any award for the firms should be “steeply discounted” and subject to scrutiny of billing records.

Edelson’s Jay Edelson, in a statement on Thursday, said it was “disappointing” that Anthropic’s general counsel, Jeffrey Bleich, “would authorize a counterfactual filing given the one-on-one negotiations he and I had to reach this deal.”

Oppenheim’s Matt Oppenheim said in a statement that it and Edelson “were critically involved" in negotiating the $1.5 billion settlement. “Anthropic cannot rewrite that history,” he said.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco will weigh the fairness of the settlement and the arguments of authors who have objected to the deal at a hearing in April.

The case is Andrea Bartz et al v. Anthropic PBC, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 3:24-cv-05417-WHA.

For plaintiffs: Justin Nelson of Susman Godfrey; and Rachel Geman of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein

For defendant: Douglas Winthrop of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer; Kathleen Hartnett of Cooley; Daralyn Durie of Morrison & Foerster; and Mark Lemley of Lex Lumina

Read more:

Authors’ lawyers in $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement seek $300 million

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(Reporting by Mike Scarcella)

((Email: mike.scarcella@thomsonreuters.com; Phone: 202-985-8228.))