A shipping-record analysis by Korea JoongAng Daily traced 563.143 metric tons of books from Taiwan’s United Distribution Co. to Better World Books, an Anthropic supplier, without establishing how many Anthropic bought.
The records cover 16 shipments beginning in November 2024. One reached the United States on Sept. 4, 2026. They show deliveries to Better World Books, but do not track what happened to the books afterward.
Anthropic’s procurement plans appear separately in meeting notes filed in the Bartz v. Anthropic copyright case. The notes show that an initial order from United Distribution Co. had internal approval by Aug. 21, 2024, although a final contract was still pending.
A proposed fourth order from the distributor awaited approval on Nov. 27, 2024. The notes also refer to simplified Chinese books from mainland China, without establishing a connection to that proposed order. Book counts and prices were redacted, and the filing does not match Anthropic’s orders to any of the recorded shipments.
Court records say Anthropic assembled books to improve its models for paying customers. Neither the shipping data nor the meeting notes establish whether books in the 16 deliveries were bought by Anthropic or scanned for its Claude models.
In a June 23, 2025, ruling, a federal judge found fair use in Anthropic’s copying of books for model training and its conversion of purchased print books into an internal digital library. The judge rejected that defense for pirated digital copies Anthropic retained in the library. The ruling did not determine how the books shipped from Taiwan were used.
The court gave final approval on July 20, 2026, to a $1.5 billion settlement covering qualifying works in the LibGen and PiLiMi collections downloaded by Anthropic. The fund provides relief to eligible copyright holders at Anthropic’s expense. That settlement does not cover the Taiwan shipments.
