Taiwan Distributor Shipped 563 Metric Tons of Books to Anthropic Partner

Taiwan’s United Distribution Co. shipped 563.143 metric tons of books to Anthropic procurement partner Better World Books, while court filings separately document Anthropic’s orders from the distributor.

The 16 shipments began in November 2024. One arrived in the United States on Sept. 4, 2026. The shipment total describes books delivered to Better World Books; it does not establish that Anthropic purchased every book in those deliveries.

Anthropic’s internal meeting notes were filed in the Bartz v. Anthropic copyright lawsuit. A first order from United Distribution Co. had received internal approval by Aug. 21, 2024, but still awaited a final contract. A proposed fourth order involving mainland Chinese books was awaiting approval on Nov. 27, 2024.

Book counts and prices in the notes were redacted. The notes do not establish that books in the proposed fourth order appeared in the recorded shipments. The shipment total also does not show how many books, if any, were scanned or used to train Anthropic’s Claude models.

The lawsuit drew a distinction between legally purchased print books and pirated digital copies. In June 2025, a federal judge ruled that scanning purchased print books into an internal digital library was fair use. The judge also found fair use in copying books for model training, but rejected that defense for pirated digital copies kept in Anthropic’s library. The ruling did not determine what happened to the books in the 16 Taiwan shipments.

In the same lawsuit, a $1.5 billion settlement over pirated copies received final approval in July 2026.