In a 20-page ‘Statement of Interest,” lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice told the judge presiding over a closely-watched lawsuit that requiring “paid licensing” would “put U.S. AI companies at a competitive disadvantage.”
Around the Book World: August 31, 2026
Publishing analyst Carlo Carrenho kicks off the week with a review of the headlines from across the international publishing world.
U.S. Textbook Authors Sue OpenAI for Copyright Infringement
If AI companies are allowed to “continually update their content by ingesting new editions of textbooks as they come out,” instructors and schools may consider dropping textbook adoptions altogether in favor of “substitutes” that rely on the use of LLM models, the suit argues.
Court Grants Final Approval to Landmark $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement
Authors included in the settlement now stand to be paid as much as $3,000 per work. Furthermore, publishers stand to reap a major windfall, with some of the larger publishers due to receive tens of millions of dollars.
U.S. Publishers Sue Google, Alleging Massive Copyright Infringement Behind Its Gemini AI Service
The lawsuit accuses Google of illegally copying millions of works to train its Gemini AI service which, the publishers argue, is already being used to flood the marketplace for books with “AI-generated substitutes.”
The French Book Business Grapples with the Rise of the Secondhand Book Trade
Among the many challenges facing the book business in France is the rise of the secondhand book trade, which publishers and observers point out has evolved from a marginal exchange between readers into a mature, sophisticated market that competes with new books.
Richard Charkin: 100 Columns Later…
For his 100th Publishing Perspectives column, Richard Charkin has some questions for the industry…
The Importance of Copyright for African and Latin American Publishers
At the World Intellectual Property Organization’s 48th session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, The International Publishers Association organized an event highlighting concerns over copyright and education exceptions in Africa and Latin America.
Anthropic Settlement Appears to Cruise Through Its Final Fairness Hearing
Attorneys told the court that the settlement claims rate had grown to nearly 93%, while the opt-out and objection rates were “minuscule,” a strong sign that the deal meets the standard of being “fair, reasonable, and adequate.”
At the AAP’s Annual Meeting, Talk of AI, Copyright, and ‘Ripples of Hope’
The Association of American Publishers hosted its 2026 Annual Meeting on May 7 with a 90-minute virtual program that featured talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham and Stanford University copyright scholar and author Paul Goldstein.