Predatory Opt-Outs: The Speculators Come for the Anthropic Copyright Settlement

The enormous, $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright class action settlement is reputedly the biggest copyright infringement recovery in history. With such a high-profile case, it’s inevitable that eligible authors aren’t the only ones looking to benefit.

Yesterday, the Publishers Lunch newsletter published a story about an Arizona law firm called ClaimsHero that has mounted a push, complete with social media ads, to encourage authors to opt out of the Anthropic settlement. Why? Presumably, because authors who opt out preserve their right to sue Anthropic, and ClaimsHero wants to identify clients for a possible class action lawsuit of its own that could enable it to reap a big payout on contingency.

ClaimsHero, which appears to be the kind of law firm that advertises on billboards along the highway, has created a webpage for this effort that frames opting out in terms of money (of course). If your work is included in the settlement, why settle for a measly $3,000 when you could receive up to $150,000, the maximum amount of statutory damages available for willful copyright infringement? (Emphasis added):

“Let us opt you out, represent you, and fight for more!” What’s not mentioned: how speculative this is, since that tempting payout depends not just on ClaimsHero winning a case, which it might not (and in any case, “up to” is doing a lot of work here: there’s no guarantee you’d receive anything close to the statutory maximum, especially after ClaimsHero deducts its hefty contingency fee), but recruiting enough clients that the amount of any potential award or settlement makes it worthwhile to file a case at all. Essentially, ClaimsHero is encouraging authors to opt out based on the promise of a lawsuit that may never exist, and money that may never materialize.

(An additional consideration: by opting out, you automatically remove not just yourself from the settlement, but all other rights holders too–a co-author, for example, or your publisher–without notification to those rightsholders.)

There’s another angle as well, as Publishers Lunch describes:

The site also appears to prey on authors who are angry about AI training on their work, even though this court case exonerated Anthropic’s training as fair use. (The settlement releases claims of copyright infringement for Anthropic’s downloading and retaining of pirated books.)  “The books copied by Anthropic helped train powerful AI systems now being commercialized for enormous profit. Authors and publishers whose works supplied that foundation deserve fair compensation — not only because their rights were violated, but because their ideas, language, and creativity became the raw material that enabled these systems to exist. Ensuring that creators are paid for their contributions is essential to preserving both the economic and ethical balance between human creativity and artificial intelligence.”

Counsel for the Anthropic plaintiffs badly want to shut this down. They filed a motion two days ago, asking Judge Alsup to prohibit ClaimsHero from making further “false or misleading statements” and order it to remove the webpage, stop advertising, and turn over the names of anyone who signed up for services in connection with the settlement. According to the motion, the original version of ClaimsHero’s Anthropic page wasn’t just misleading, but actively deceptive:

[snip]

The motion goes on to describe how plaintiffs’ counsel contacted ClaimsHero with a variety of requests, including that they delete the webpage–none of which ClaimsHero agreed to, though it did make the changes you can see in the first screenshot above, expanding the text at the top of the page and changing the label on the clickable link from “Start Claim” to “Opt Out Today.” The motion also includes examples of ClaimsHero’s ads on Instagram and elsewhere, including this one that touts “potential serious cash settlement”:

There Will Probably Be More

The other day I received this reply on one of my Bluesky posts about the settlement:

I did DM him, but he didn’t give me details, other than that he was aware of “a number” of authors who planned to pursue individual cases. To be clear, given his qualifications, I’ve no reason to think this is shady. But along with ClaimsHero, it is a signal that third parties, whether predatory or well-intentioned, will be seeking to make hay from the settlement.

Opting out of the settlement is certainly a choice you can make, thus preserving your right to separately sue Anthropic for the infringement of your work. Given the enormous number of authors who’ve been locked out of the settlement by the copyright registration requirement, it’s not unreasonable to think that there may be other class actions seeking redress for those authors.

No guarantees, however–either that other lawsuits will happen or that, if they do, they’ll be successful–or that, if successful, they will yield a financial windfall beyond what Anthropic has agreed to provide. Class action lawsuits are difficult and expensive and require law firms with substantial resources at their disposal, especially when going up against a multi-billion-dollar company–no matter how many movies you’ve seen about the brave solo practitioner taking down a giant corporation. Opting out should be a careful and considered decision, in full understanding of the fact that you’re turning down a guaranteed payout for the risk of getting nothing. The chimera of a bigger payday, as encouraged by the likes of ClaimsHero, should not be your primary motivation.

If you do opt out, you can change your mind and opt back in, though there’s a March 2, 2026 deadline for doing so.

UPDATE 11/14/25: In a hearing held yesterday, ClaimsHero was raked over the coals, according to Bloomberg.

Judge William Alsup called ClaimsHero’s tactics to lure authors away from the deal “a fraud of immense proportions” during a Thursday hearing in San Francisco. He demanded the company alter its “misleading” communications with potential claimants.

He told ClaimsHero’s counsel, Devin Freedman of Freedman Normand Friedland LLP, he’s “disturbed” by the “blatant attempt by your client to trick people into opting out” to make a “quick buck” by accumulating opt outs to try and cut a sweeter deal with Anthropic. Alsup said that would amount to “extortion” and that he’d refer the company to the US attorney if it happens.

ClaimsHero, meanwhile, argues that it has been acting in good faith.

The court has given ClaimsHero 48 hours to correct its website, remove misinformation, and terminate advertising. It must also provide the names and contact information of any writers who signed up for its services in connection with the Anthropic settlement. There will be a hearing on November 25 so the court can question those writers.

UPDATE 11/21/25: Per the court’s directives, ClaimsHero has made changes to its website. To the text in the box at the top of the page (see the screenshot that begins this post), directly following their exhortation to “Let us opt you out, represent you, and fight for more”, ClaimsHero has added a couple of sentences about “learning about the pros and cons” of making a claim or opting out, and a link to the official settlement website.

This, from the Overview that follows, also appears to be a response to the court’s directive, making clear that ClaimsHero, which has no litigation experience (seems like an important data point!), would need to find another law firm, with its own contingency fees, to actually bring suit:

ClaimsHero is just getting started revolutionizing the way consumers interact with class actions, and as of today, does not yet have experience litigating in state or federal court. Consequently, ClaimsHero partners with experienced and sophisticated law firms that litigate high stakes cases all over the country. If you decide to opt out and retain ClaimsHero, we will partner with another one of these law firms to file an individual suit on your behalf against Anthropic. That, of course, will not increase the amount you owe in attorney fees, as ClaimsHero simply shares the percent you will agree to pay it, with its partner law firms!

Also note that the suit would not be a class action, but an individual suit. ClaimsHero is what’s known as a third-party filer, specializing in recruiting claimants in class action lawsuits and filing individual claims on their behalf. The FAQ on ClaimsHero’s About page calls this a Direct Legal Action, which as far as I can tell is not a legal term of art, but which ClaimsHero defines thus:

A direct legal action is when an individual brings their own claim — rather than being part of a class action — to pursue compensation for harm caused by a company. In many situations, these individual cases are organized into mass actions or mass arbitrations, where hundreds or thousands of people file similar claims at the same time in court or arbitration. This coordinated approach creates efficiency while still allowing each person’s claim to be handled individually. Direct legal actions sometimes lead to higher individual recoveries than class action settlements.

How likely is it that this “mass action” approach will succeed? According to this article, ClaimsHero was able to successfully batch-submit claims in a financial aid class action settlement, but its attempt to do the same in an Apple Siri privacy settlement earlier this year was rejected by the court.

ClaimsHero is currently running ads for “gaming addiction” lawsuits that are similar to those it ran to recruit Anthropic class members.