Nippan Faces Publisher Backlash Over Book Sales to Anthropic for AI Training

Summary

Japanese publishers are criticizing Nippan Group Holdings after the company acknowledged that a subsidiary sold Japanese books to Anthropic without notifying the publishers. The sales came to light in documents filed in a U.S. lawsuit brought by authors who allege that Anthropic infringed copyright by digitizing books and obtaining book data from pirated websites. Anthropic is believed to have run a project that involved cutting the spines from large quantities of books and scanning their pages, and a supplier called “Nippan Japan” was listed in the documents. Nippan reportedly told the Japan Book Publishers Association that it did not know the books were intended for AI training, while declining to discuss individual transactions publicly; company officials have nevertheless begun visiting publishers to explain the sales. The controversy is particularly damaging as Nippan faces pressure from a worsening publishing market: its fiscal 2025 consolidated sales were ¥342.7 billion, while it recorded a ¥1.3 billion operating loss and a ¥3.6 billion loss in its wholesale business. The legal status of the transactions remains unsettled. Japan’s Copyright Law Article 30-4, added in 2018, generally permits works to be used for AI training without permission, and a copyright lawyer said there are no judicial precedents establishing that buying and scanning books for this purpose is illegal. He also argued that the unequal economic benefits for AI developers and publishers point to a need for contract discussions, training-data disclosure, and a retrospective opt-out system. The publishers’ association plans to gather information at a board meeting in late October and consider whether members should negotiate with Nippan individually or act collectively.