Bloomsbury Publishing, the London-listed publisher behind the Harry Potter series and the 'Sarah J. Maas' fantasy empire, is poised to receive a payout from a $1.5bn (£1.17bn) copyright settlement with US artificial intelligence company Anthropic. The deal, announced on Wednesday, resolves a class-action lawsuit brought by a coalition of authors and publishers who alleged that Anthropic used their copyrighted works without permission to train its Claude AI models.
Anthropic, which has faced mounting legal scrutiny over its data-scraping practices, has agreed to the substantial settlement fund without admitting liability. The payout will be distributed among affected rights holders, with Bloomsbury expected to receive a significant portion given the scale of its catalogue used in AI training datasets. The settlement also includes an agreement for ongoing licensing arrangements for future use of published content.
The news comes as the publishing industry grapples with the rapid rise of generative AI. Publishers have argued that their intellectual property is being exploited without fair compensation, while AI companies maintain that training on publicly available text falls under 'fair use'. This settlement, however, signals a shift toward formalised licensing frameworks. Bloomsbury's shares rose 2.3% in early London trading to 684p, outperforming a flat FTSE 250 index.
For UK investors and pension holders, the settlement underscores the growing financial value of content rights in the AI era. Bloomsbury, which has diversified into academic and digital publishing, now stands to gain a recurring revenue stream from AI licensing deals. Analysts at Peel Hunt noted that this could add an estimated 5-8% to Bloomsbury's annual earnings per share if similar agreements are struck with other AI developers.
The broader FTSE 350 media sector saw modest gains on the news, with Pearson and Informa also up around 0.5%, as the market anticipates a wave of similar settlements. However, some legal experts caution that the settlement may not be a template for all publishers, as the specifics of each case vary by jurisdiction and contract terms.