In a dispute filed by tech giant Thomson Reuters against legal tech company Ross Intelligence, a U.S. federal judge last week issued a summary judgment. The judge determined that Ross had violated Reuters’ intellectual property by using its AI legal research platform to train on Reuters information.
The decision may affect the more than 39 copyright-related AI cases that are presently pending in American courts. However, it’s not always clear-cut for plaintiffs who claim that AI companies have infringed their intellectual property rights.
Ross was charged with training its AI using headnotes, which are summaries of court rulings, from Westlaw, Reuters’ legal research service. Ross promoted its artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for document analysis and query-based searches throughout court files.
Ross said that because its use of copyrighted headnotes was transformative—that is, it repurposed the headnotes to serve a notably different function or market—it was legally defendable. The judge overseeing the case, Stephanos Bibas, did not find that argument to be very compelling in his summary decision.
Bibas believed that Ross was directly replicating Westlaw’s legal research service by repackaging Westlaw’s headnotes. Bibas concluded that Ross’ assertion of transformative use was undermined because the startup’s platform did not offer any new meaning, purpose, or commentary.
Bibas cited Ross’ business interests as one of the reasons the startup’s security fell short in his ruling. With little “recontextualization” of the intellectual property-protected Westlaw content, Ross aimed to make money off of a product that directly competed with Westlaw.
Shubha Ghosh, a Syracuse University professor who studies IP law, named it a “strong victory” for Thomson Reuters.
“The trial will proceed, [but] Thomson Reuters was awarded a summary judgment, a victory at this stage of the litigation,”.
“The judge also affirmed that Ross wasn’t entitled to summary judgment on its defenses, such as fair use and merger. As a consequence, the case continues to trial with a strong victory for Thomson Reuters.”
