Susman Godfrey partners Justin Nelson, Rohit Nath, Ian Crosby and Davida Brook have been named to Forbes’ inaugural list of America’s Top AI Lawyers. The 2027 list recognizes leading attorneys whose work addresses the legal questions raised by artificial intelligence.
Justin Nelson and Rohit Nath recently secured final court approval of a $1.5 billion settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic, resolving copyright claims over Anthropic’s downloading of books from pirated databases. The Bartz settlement is the largest known copyright recovery in history. Nelson served as co-lead counsel in Bartz and is also court-appointed interim lead class counsel in the consolidated copyright litigation against OpenAI and Microsoft that raises fundamental questions regarding the legal questions surrounding the use and acquisition of copyrighted material by AI companies. Nath argued against Anthropic’s fair use defense at summary judgment and was appointed to lead a separate consolidated AI copyright action against Apple. Nelson and Nath also represent copyright owners in a variety of different matters related to AI.
Ian Crosby and Davida Brook lead The New York Times’ landmark copyright litigation against OpenAI and Microsoft. The Times alleges that the companies used millions of its articles without permission to train and operate their generative AI products. Brook also serves as court-appointed liaison counsel for the over a dozen news plaintiffs in the consolidated In re OpenAI copyright litigation. In addition, Crosby and Brook co-lead the plaintiffs’ case in Penske v Google, an antitrust action over AI Overviews and the “forced choice” imposed on publishers to either allow their content to be scraped for GAI or not appear in search results.
