A US court has ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters in its copyright lawsuit against legal AI startup Ross Intelligence. The case, filed in 2020, questioned whether AI companies can use copyrighted content under “fair use.”
US District Judge Stephanos Bibas rejected Ross’s defense, stating that the AI firm directly copied Westlaw’s copyrighted material, including headnotes written by human editors. The court determined that Ross’s actions harmed the market for Westlaw’s subscription service, making the copying an infringement rather than fair use.
Ross had attempted to license Westlaw’s content but, after being denied, acquired legal research materials indirectly from another company, LegalEase. The AI company later used these materials to train its search engine, which Judge Bibas ruled was clear evidence of copyright violation.
Ross, which shut down in 2021 due to legal challenges, argued that its AI extracted answers directly from legal texts rather than relying on Westlaw’s annotations. However, the court found that Ross’s training data closely mirrored Westlaw’s summaries, leading to the ruling in favor of Thomson Reuters. This case is significant as it sets a legal precedent for how AI tools handle copyrighted material. Similar lawsuits against AI giants like OpenAI and Microsoft are still in progress, and their outcomes may be influenced by this decision. The ruling highlights the ongoing legal challenges AI companies face when using copyrighted data without proper authorization.
