Taiwan Distributor Shipped 563 Metric Tons of Books to Anthropic Partner

Taiwan's United Distribution Co. shipped 563.143 metric tons of books to Better World Books, a company that works with Anthropic to buy books. Court records separately show that Anthropic placed orders with United Distribution Co.

The 16 shipments began in November 2024. One shipment arrived in the United States on Sept. 4, 2026. The total weight covers books delivered to Better World Books. It does not prove that Anthropic bought every book in those deliveries.

Notes from Anthropic's internal meetings were submitted as evidence in the copyright lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic. By Aug. 21, 2024, Anthropic had internally approved its first order from United Distribution Co., but the final contract had not yet been completed. On Nov. 27, 2024, a proposed fourth order involving books from mainland China was still waiting for approval.

The notes hide the numbers of books and their prices. They do not prove that any books from the proposed fourth order were included in the recorded shipments. The total shipment weight also does not show how many books, if any, Anthropic scanned or used to train its Claude AI models.

The lawsuit treated legally purchased printed books differently from pirated digital copies. In June 2025, a federal judge ruled that scanning purchased printed books to create an internal digital library was fair use under copyright law. The judge also ruled that copying books to train AI models was fair use, but rejected that defense for pirated digital copies kept in Anthropic's library. The ruling did not establish what happened to the books in the 16 shipments from Taiwan.

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