Judge lets three claims proceed over Anthropic Claude Max advertising

By Sophie Lindqvist

A federal judge on Friday, Nov. 6, allowed three claims in a proposed class action over Anthropic’s $100 Claude Max 5x and $200 Max 20x advertising to proceed in San Francisco.

Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted Anthropic’s motion to dismiss only in part in Kahn v. Anthropic PBC, No. 3:26-cv-05763.

Breach-of-contract and negligent-misrepresentation claims survived. Solomon Smith’s claim under California’s Consumers Legal Remedies Act also survived. Karl Kahn’s parallel CLRA claim did not. The order resolved what plaintiffs must allege, not whether Anthropic violated the law. That distinction matters because the proposed class action remains at the pleading stage.

What did the court decide about more usage?

Plaintiffs Karl Kahn and Solomon Smith say the advertised multipliers—5x or 20x more usage than Pro—apply to each five-hour session. They contend weekly limits do not rise by 5x or 20x over Claude Pro. Anthropic argued that reasonable buyers would understand more usage as per-session language, citing its help pages.

Tse found that argument unpersuasive at this stage. The per-session disclosure sits “two hyperlinks away from the primary sales pages” and outside the sales funnel, he wrote. Given monthly billing, consumers could reasonably infer a promise of 5x or 20x more usage per month. A five-hour window does not explain the full monthly allotment.

The reasoning focused on what buyers could infer from the sales pages, not only the help documentation. Courthouse News first reported the ruling, according to The Next Web.

How large is the weekly usage gap?

On Claude’s Sonnet 4 model, the complaint calculates that Max 5x users get 3.5 times Pro’s weekly usage. Max 20x users get six times Pro’s weekly usage, according to that calculation. These figures are the plaintiffs’ arithmetic, not a judicial finding or an independently verified measurement. Tse found the advertising plausibly misleading, but the order did not verify those ratios.

Neither weekly ratio reaches its plan multiplier on the plaintiffs’ calculation. Tse’s monthly-billing reasoning makes that distinction commercially material.

Which legal claims failed?

Tse also rejected Anthropic’s argument that a Claude subscription is not a service under the CLRA. He found that Claude Code plausibly qualifies as one.

Smith’s CLRA claim could proceed because he is a computer-science student. Tse wrote that “educational use is plainly not commercial use,” quoting the plaintiffs. Kahn’s CLRA claim failed because he had not shown that he used Claude for personal rather than commercial purposes.

The UCL and FAL claims—unfair competition and false advertising—failed for a different reason. Both plaintiffs still subscribe, so the court found no standing to seek an injunction. They also did not explain why damages would be an inadequate remedy. Those rulings concerned standing and remedy, not a merits finding on the advertising.

Tse separately dismissed the implied-covenant claim over Anthropic’s tightening of usage limits during billing cycles. Anthropic’s terms reserve the right to change capacity limits. The dismissed claims may be amended by Dec. 2.

What does Anthropic’s IPO filing disclose?

Anthropic’s amended S-1, filed Nov. 2, says the company faces several putative class-action complaints alleging false, misleading and deceptive advertising of Claude subscription plans. It describes the matters as generally early-stage. Anthropic says it intends to defend itself vigorously. The filing predates the Nov. 6 ruling by four days.

A risk factor says changes to usage limits have produced, and could produce, claims that Anthropic’s disclosures about model access or capabilities were inadequate or misleading. The filing does not name the Kahn case. It provides no dollar figure for the litigation. The document therefore discloses legal exposure without quantifying it. MLQ separately published a guide to Anthropic’s IPO timing, valuation and amended S-1.

What happens next?

The amended complaint is due Dec. 2. If the plaintiffs do not amend it, Anthropic must answer by Dec. 16.

For Anthropic, the immediate commercial test is clarity: the company must make the $100 and $200 plans’ five-hour and weekly limits clear enough to answer the monthly inference Tse described. Otherwise, more disputes could follow over what subscribers buy and whether model-access disclosures keep pace with capacity changes.