Alsup brands ClaimsHero's Anthropic opt-out push 'a fraud'

At a hearing in San Francisco on Thursday, federal Judge William Alsup called a third-party firm's push to pull class members out of Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement 'a fraud of immense proportions.'

The firm is ClaimsHero. It has been running online ads urging authors to reject the court-approved deal of roughly $3,000 per included work and opt out instead to 'fight for up to $150,000 per book' through a separate lawsuit. The settlement covers nearly 500,000 books.

Alsup, according to Bloomberg Law, told ClaimsHero's counsel Devin Freedman of Freedman Normand Friedland LLP that he was 'disturbed' by the 'blatant attempt by your client to trick people into opting out' for a 'quick buck'. He called the marketing 'propaganda'. Asked about the firm's federal and state court experience, he spelled the answer out himself: 'Z-E-R-O'.

The judge ordered ClaimsHero to change its website within 48 hours, including an explicit acknowledgment that it has no experience litigating in federal or state court. An evidentiary hearing is set for Nov. 25, when authors who signed up through the firm will be questioned.

Anthropic is already one of our most-tracked companies, with 382 stories across the last 90 days in our Anthropic feed. This one sits outside the usual capability-and-capital beat: it is the settlement plumbing of Bartz v. Anthropic learning to handle the claim-aggregators that tend to shadow any large class action.