Anthropic asks court to dismiss Bartz opt-out authors' suit as time-barred

What happened

On 18 September 2026 Anthropic filed a motion to dismiss (docket entry #48) in Shakespeare v. Anthropic PBC, 5:26-cv-05931 (N.D. Cal.) — the copyright suit brought by authors who opted out of the Bartz class settlement. According to reporting on the filing, Anthropic's brief argues the opt-out plaintiffs' copyright claims are barred by copyright's three-year statute of limitations, i.e. that the authors waited too long to sue and the case must be dismissed. The brief is the company's first merits attack on the opt-out wave that followed the Bartz settlement.

Why it may matter to you

The Bartz opt-outs are the frontier of post-Bartz creator litigation over AI training data. If Anthropic's limitations defense succeeds, it could close the door on late-emerging author suits over training that the authors say they only learned about recently.

What is not yet known

The court has not ruled on the motion; the plaintiffs' opposition and any reply are still to come. The characterization above follows reporting on the brief, not a full read of the filing itself.