Landmark AI Copyright Ruling: Thomson Reuters Wins Case Against Ross Intelligence

What the US' first major AI copyright ruling might mean for IP law | TechCrunch

Copyright claims against AI companies just got a potential boost. A U.S. federal judge last week handed down a summary judgment in a case brought by tech conglomerate Thomson Reuters against legal tech firm Ross Intelligence. The judge found that Ross' use of Reuters' content to train its AI legal research platform infringed on Reuters' intellectual property. The outcome could have implications for the more than 39 copyright-related AI lawsuits currently working their way through U.S. courthouses. That said, it's not necessarily a slam dunk for plaintiffs who allege that AI companies violated their IP rights. Ross was accused of using headnotes -- summaries of legal decisions -- from Westlaw, Reuters' legal research service, to train its AI. Ross marketed its AI as a tool to analyze documents and perform query-based searches across court filings. Ross argued that its use of copyrighted headnotes was legally defensible because it was transformative, meaning it repurposed the headnotes to serve a markedly different function or market. In his summary judgment, Stephanos Bibas, the judge presiding over the case, didn't find that argument particularly convincing. Ross, Bibas said in his opinion, was repackaging Westlaw headnotes in a way that directly replicated Westlaw's legal research service. The startup's platform didn't add new meaning, purpose, or commentary, Bibas determined -- undermining Ross' claim of transformative use. In his decision, Bibas also cited Ross' commercial motivations as a reason the startup's defense missed the mark. Ross sought to profit from a product that competed directly with Westlaw, and without significant "recontextualization" of the IP-protected Westlaw material. Shubha Ghosh, a Syracuse University professor who studies IP law, called 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," Ghosh said. "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." Already, at least one set of plaintiffs in another AI copyright case have asked a court to consider Bibas' decision. But it's not yet clear whether the precedent will sway other judges. Bibas' opinion made a point of distinguishing between "generative AI" and the AI that Ross was using, which didn't generate content but merely spit back judicial opinions that were already written. Generative AI, which is at the center of copyright lawsuits against companies such as OpenAI and Midjourney, is frequently trained on massive amounts of content from public sources around the web. When fed lots of examples, generative AI can generate speech, text, images, videos, music, and more. Most companies developing generative AI argue that fair use doctrines shield their practice of scraping data and using it for training without compensating -- or even crediting -- the data's owners. They argue that they're entitled to use any publicly available content for training and that their models are in effect outputting transformative works. But not every copyright holder agrees. Some point to the phenomenon known as regurgitation, where generative AI creates content closely resembling the work it was trained on. Randy McCarthy, a U.S. patent attorney at the law firm Hall Estill, said Bibas' focus on the "impacts upon the market for the original work" could be key to rights holders' cases against generative AI developers. But he also cautioned that Bibas' opinion is relatively narrow and that it may be overturned on appeal. "One thing is clear, at least in this case: merely using copyrighted material as training data [for] an AI cannot be said to be fair use per se," McCarthy told TechCrunch. "[But it's] one battle in a larger war, and we'll need to see more developments before we can extract from this the law pertaining to the use of copyrighted materials as AI training data." Another attorney TechCrunch spoke with, Mark Lezama, a litigation partner at Knobbe Martens focusing on patent disputes, thinks Bibas' opinion could have wider implications. He's of the view that the judge's reasoning could extend to generative AI in its various forms. "The court rejected a fair-use defense as a matter of law in part because Ross used [Thomson Reuters] headnotes to develop a competing legal research system," he said. "Although the court hinted this might be different from a situation involving generative AI, it's easy to see a news site arguing that copying its articles for training a generative AI is no different because the generative AI uses the copyrighted articles to compete with the news site for user attention." In other words, publishers and copyright owners duking it out with AI companies have slight reason to be optimistic after the decision -- emphasis on slight.

Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case in the US

The Thomson Reuters decision has big implications for the battle between generative AI companies and rightsholders. Thomson Reuters has won the first major AI copyright case in the United States. In 2020, the media and technology conglomerate filed an unprecedented AI copyright lawsuit against the legal AI startup Ross Intelligence. In the complaint, Thomson Reuters claimed the AI firm reproduced materials from its legal research firm Westlaw. Today, a judge ruled in Thomson Reuters' favor, noting the company's copyright was indeed infringed by Ross Intelligence's actions. "None of Ross's possible defenses holds water. I reject them all," wrote US District Court of Delaware Judge Stephanos Bibas, in a summary judgement. Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The generative AI boom has led to a spate of additional legal fights about how AI companies can use copyrighted material, as many major AI tools were developed by training on copyrighted works including books, films, visual artwork, and websites. Right now, there are several dozen lawsuits currently winding through the US court system, as well as international challenges in China, Canada, the UK, and other countries. Notably, Judge Bibas ruled in Thomson Reuters' favor on the question of fair use. The fair use doctrine is a key component of how AI companies are seeking to defend themselves against claims that they used copyrighted materials illegally. The idea underpinning fair use is that sometimes it's legally permissible to use copyrighted works without permission -- for example, to create parody works, or in non-commercial research or news production. When determining whether fair use applies, courts use a four-factor test, looking at the reason behind the work, the nature of the work (whether it's poetry, nonfiction, private letters, et cetera), the amount of copyrighted work used, and how the use impacts the market value of the original. Thomson Reuters prevailed on two of the four factors, but Bibas described the fourth as the most important, and ruled that Ross "meant to compete with Westlaw by developing a market substitute." Even before this ruling, Ross Intelligence had already felt the impact of the court battle: the startup shut down in 2021, citing the cost of litigation. In contrast, many of the AI companies still duking it out in court, like OpenAI and Google, are financially equipped to weather prolonged legal fights. Still, this ruling is a blow to AI companies, according to Cornell University professor of digital and internet law James Grimmelmann: "If this decision is followed elsewhere, it's really bad for the generative AI companies." Grimmelmann believes that Bibas's judgement suggests that much of the case law that generative AI companies are citing to argue fair use is "irrelevant." Chris Mammen, a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson who focuses on intellectual property law, concurs that this will complicate AI companies' fair use arguments, although it could vary from plaintiff to plaintiff. "It puts a finger on the scale towards holding that fair use doesn't apply," he says.

Thomson Reuters lands copyright win against AI company. What's next?

The first landmark win in an AI copyright case is here. A Delaware court has ruled that a tech startup used copyright-protected material to build a competing AI-based legal product, which is against the law, handing over a remarkable win to Thomson Reuters. This is the first major victory for a plaintiff fighting against an AI company over what constitutes "fair use" of material owned by another entity. The parent company of the Reuters news agency has been tangled in a lengthy legal case against Ross Intelligence, an AI company that lifted material from Thomson Reuters's Westlaw platform. Recommended Videos The plaintiff argued in court that Ross Intelligence's usage of material pulled from its database to train an AI-powered legal research tool was not fair use, and that it infringed on copyright-protected material. In their ruling, U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas rejected Ross' claims that its conduct was "innocent infringement," granting a summary judgment in favor of Thomson Reuters. At the center of the case is the concept of fair use, which is broadly dependent on four factors: (1) The purpose and character of using copyright material, including whether it is commercial or nonprofit (2) The nature of the copyrighted work that was used (3) How much of the work was used and how substantial a part it was relative to the copyrighted work's whole (4) How does the usage affect the copyrighted work's value or potential market position The district court's decision was a 2-2 split between Ross Intelligence and Thomson Reuters, but Judge Bibas ruled that the fourth factor outweighs the rest. The latest court ruling could set the ball rolling for more decisive action in other cases where AI companies have been dragged to court for unfairly using copyright-protected content. The dawn of a new era for AI training battles? One of the biggest such cases involved The New York Times mounting a legal challenge against OpenAI and its backer Microsoft for using the news outlet's content without proper authorization to train its AI products such as ChatGPT. Getty's lawsuits against Stability AI are another example where the "scraping" of content without due licensing or compensation was challenged. Amazon-backed Anthropic also found itself tangled in a copyright battle against the Universal Music Group. Recently, we have seen a new trend where two supposedly warring sides strike a licensing deal to quell the copyright disputes. OpenAI has struck licensing deals with Axios, Hearst, and CondeNast, among others. Perplexity, stung by its own long list of copyright lawsuits, has inked similar partnerships with Fortune and Times, to name a few. Meta, Google, and Microsoft have also signed similar deals with "content" partners. Even the Reuters news agency has entered into a licensing partnership with Meta. But striking licensing deals is merely a stop-gap solution. Experts are still divided and seek further clarity on what constitutes copyright law in the age of AI. For example, if an AI model is regurgitating a paraphrased version of someone's copyright-protected material, what degree of similarity between the two would trigger a copyright infringement lawsuit? We'll find out soon.

A Legal Win for Content Creators Could Change How AI Models Get Built

Training a typical AI model can require so much data that companies that make AIs have to scramble to find source material, sometimes wading into legal gray areas or outright grabbing content that's someone else's intellectual property. This habit has resulted in a number of high-profile lawsuits where newspapers, artists, authors and more have accused AI makers of stealing their data. The Thomson Reuters case centered on what the Hollywood Reporter called its "legal research platform" which let users look up specific legal facts and regulations. The copyrighted material in the platform included summaries of legal points and other issues, custom-created to make it easier for users to use the system. A now defunct AI company, Ross Intelligence, used some of this summary information to train its own AI legal advice model. The paper Reporter says the legal arguments related to whether or not these summaries were "original works," which would mean they were protected as intellectual property of Thomson Reuters. In a ruling, U.S. District Judge Stephanos Bibas of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia rejected Intelligence's argument that grabbing this data was covered by "fair use" copyright rules. These rules allow third parties to take small amounts of other people's copyrighted material and rework or "transform" them, such as for a parody. The new ruling involved, in part, a consideration that Ross was planning to profit off the material that originally created by Thomson Reuters.

Federal judge delivers first major AI copyright ruling against startup

Why it matters: A federal judge in Delaware has delivered a landmark ruling in the first major AI copyright case in the United States, siding with Thomson Reuters in its lawsuit against legal AI startup Ross Intelligence. The decision, issued this week by US Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, marks a significant moment in the ongoing debate over AI training and the use of copyrighted data. The case, filed in 2020, accused Ross Intelligence of reproducing materials from Thomson Reuters' Westlaw legal research database to build a competing AI-powered legal platform. Judge Bibas rejected Ross Intelligence's fair use defense, a key argument used by AI companies in copyright disputes. "None of Ross's possible defenses holds water. I reject them all," he wrote in his summary judgment. The ruling focused on non-generative AI, distinguishing it from generative AI systems like large language models. The fair use doctrine, a crucial component of US copyright law, allows for the unauthorized use of copyrighted works under certain circumstances. In this case, Judge Bibas ruled that two of the four fair use factors favored Thomson Reuters: the purpose of Ross's use of Westlaw headnotes and its harm to the market for the originals. "Ross took the headnotes to make it easier to develop a competing legal research tool," Bibas wrote. "So Ross's use is not transformative." It must be noted that Judge Bibas' reasoning in the Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence case diverged from earlier rulings on fair use in key ways. His decision emphasized the commercial and competitive nature of the AI firm's actions. But one of the most significant departures in Judge Bibas' analysis was his interpretation of "transformative use," a cornerstone of fair use jurisprudence. In previous cases, courts have often found fair use when copyrighted material was repurposed to serve a new or different function. This decision could have far-reaching implications for the AI industry, potentially complicating fair use arguments for companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms, who are facing similar copyright lawsuits. These tech giants argue that their AI systems make fair use of copyrighted material by studying it to create new content, while copyright owners contend that the companies use their work to generate competing content that threatens their livelihoods. "If this decision is followed elsewhere, it's really bad for the generative AI companies," Cornell University professor James Grimmelmann told Wired. He added that Bibas' judgment suggests much of the case law that generative AI companies are citing to argue fair use is "irrelevant." Chris Mammen, a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson specializing in intellectual property law, concurred that this ruling could complicate AI companies' fair use arguments, although the impact may vary from case to case. "It puts a finger on the scale towards holding that fair use doesn't apply," he said. The ruling has already had significant consequences for Ross Intelligence, which shut down in 2021 due to the cost of litigation. Of course, many of the AI companies still engaged in legal battles, such as OpenAI and Google, are financially equipped to weather prolonged legal fights.

Thomson Reuters Wins Copyright Case Against AI Startup Ross

Disclaimer: This content generated by AI & may have errors or hallucinations. Edit before use. Read our Terms of use "The law is no longer a brooding omnipresence in the sky; it now dwells in legal research platforms," remarked a court judgement from the US District Court of Delaware. The court had passed a summary judgement in favour of Thomson Reuters, which had sued an AI startup for copyright infringement. This decision marks the first major victory in the legal battles publishers and copyright holders have been waging against AI companies across the world. Background of the case: Thomson Reuters owns Westlaw, a major legal research platform containing case law, statutes, regulations, and editorial content like headnotes. Westlaw organizes this content using its copyrighted Key Number System. Ross, a competitor, wanted to create an AI-powered legal search engine. After Thomson Reuters refused to license Westlaw's content to Ross, Ross partnered with LegalEase to obtain training data. LegalEase provided Ross with about 25,000 "Bulk Memos" -- compilations of legal questions and answers created by lawyers using Westlaw headnotes as reference, though they were instructed not to copy the headnotes directly. Thomson Reuters sued Ross for copyright infringement. In 2023, the court initially denied most of Thomson Reuters's summary judgment motions. However, before the planned August 2024 trial, the judge reviewed the case materials more thoroughly and decided to postpone the trial to allow both parties to submit new summary judgment arguments. How Did The Court Reach Its Judgement? The judge held that while judicial opinions were not copyrightable, Reuters's headnotes were in fact original and copyrightable work as they introduced creativity by "distilling, synthesizing, or explaining part of an opinion." The same conclusion was reached for the Key Number System. The judge also went through 2,830 headnotes and found that 2,243 of those were based on actual copying. The court also dismissed several defenses presented by Ross's legal team, including claims of innocent infringement, allegations that Reuters was exploiting its copyright claim against public interest, the argument that the ideas in the headnotes were inseparable from their expression and thus uncopyrightable, and the scenes à faire defense, which typically shields elements that naturally arise from a work's theme. Ross had also attempted to justify its use through a fair use defense, which the court analysed at length. In US law, for something to be considered fair use, courts have to examine four factors: The court held that factors one and four went in favour of Thomson Reuters, as Ross's use was commerical and non-transformative in nature and could hamper Westlaw's business. On the other hand, the court put factors two and three in favour of Ross. But since the court felt that factor two matters less than the others and factor four matters more, it granted a judgement in Reuters's favour. Why This Matters: AI companies have come under fire in various parts of the world over their alleged use of copyrighted material in training their AI models. Publishers have alleged that since AI firms scrape publicly available data from the internet for their training datasets, they often use copyrighted material from news websites or books. This allegedly means that the AI model can even output copyrighted material in response to user prompts. Reuters is not the only news organisation that has sued an AI firm. The New York Times is also currently pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit against Open AI, as is Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI). The Federation of Indian Publishers and the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) have also sought to join the same lawsuit. Other copyright holders that have filed lawsuits against AI companies include the likes of Centre For Investigative Reporting, the Author's Guild, eight local newspaper publications in the US and a number of other writers and digital news outlets. The Reuters victory in this case marks the first time an AI company has lost a legal battle in a copyright lawsuit. The case could set the precedent for ongoing and future legal conflicts on the use of copyrighted material for AI training. Also Read:

Thomson Reuters victorious in revised AI copyright case

The win is likely to impact the many other AI battles currently raging on between GenAI companies and copyright holders. Canadian technology company Thomson Reuters, has won a favourable summary judgement against AI start-up Ross Intelligence, in a copyright infringement lawsuit. In 2020 the Reuters parent company accused Ross Intelligence of unlawfully copying and using content from its Westlaw platform to train its AI models. Thomson Reuters said Ross Intelligence made use of its Westlaw search engine which indexes material that is not copyrightable, for example legal decisions and also intersperses it with its own content. Reportedly, headnotes were copied to create bulk memos, which were then used by Ross Intelligence to train an AI-powered legal research tool. In 2023 US Circuit judge Stephanos Bibas denied Thomson Reuters a summary judgement, stating that fair use and infringement were issues to be considered by a jury, however, he since revised his ruling, disallowing fair use as a defense for training models on proprietary data without permission. "In my 2023 opinion, I denied summary judgment on fair use," Judge Bibas wrote. "But with new information and understanding, I vacate those sections of that order and its accompanying opinion addressing fair use. Fair use is an affirmative defense, so Ross bears the burden of proof. "Smart man knows when he is right, a wise man knows when he is wrong. Wisdom does not always find me, so I try to embrace it when it does, even if it comes late, as it did here." Since the creation of generative AI (GenAI), issues of copyright and infringement have been a topic of contention between technology companies, artists and content creators and Thomson Reuters' victory may well impact how current lawsuits proceed. For example, in 2023 the New York Times launched a legal battle against OpenAI and Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement and that case is ongoing. The publication claims that AI chatbots made by these companies are trained on millions of articles published by The New York Times. The media outlet also claims that it now competes with these chatbots as a source of reliable information. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Thomson Reuters wins AI copyright ruling over training data

Thomson Reuters has won a partial summary judgment in a copyright case against shuttered AI firm Ross Intelligence, a decision that disallows fair use as a defense for training models on proprietary data without permission. "We are pleased that the court granted summary judgment in our favor and concluded that Westlaw's editorial content created and maintained by our attorney editors, is protected by copyright and cannot be used without our consent," a spokesperson for Thomson Reuters told The Register. "The copying of our content was not 'fair use.'" Ross Intelligence announced its shutdown on December 11, 2020, following the Thomson Reuters lawsuit, and subsequently filed an unsuccessful antitrust counterclaim. The AI legal startup did not respond to a request for comment. As the case continues toward settlement or trial, the issue will be damages rather than whether the use of the copyrighted material is lawful, unless there's a successful appeal. At least 38 AI-related copyright claims are pending before US courts. The decision in the five-year-old case against Ross Intelligence, accused of infringing content created by Thomson Reuters' Westlaw subsidiary by using it for training AI models, represents the first significant adverse decision against an AI firm with regard to copyright law. Federal district Judge Stephanos Bibas came to a different conclusion in Delaware last year when he mostly denied [PDF] the Thomson Reuters' motion for summary judgement. But subsequently, the judge reconsidered his 2023 summary judgement opinion, and in a memorandum opinion [PDF] issued on Tuesday, he has disallowed fair use as a copyright defense. This is particularly noteworthy because the case focuses on training (AI model input) rather than inference (AI model output). In his memorandum, the judge describes how Ross Intelligence tried to compete with Westlaw. To train its AI legal search tool, the startup first tried to license Westlaw's content but was refused. It then enlisted legal support vendor LegalEase Solutions to obtain the training data through so-called "bulk memos." As the judge's memo explains, "Bulk memos are lawyers' compilations of legal questions with good and bad answers. LegalEase gave those lawyers a guide explaining how to create those questions using Westlaw headnotes, while clarifying that the lawyers should not just copy and paste headnotes directly into the questions." LegalEase is said to have sold Ross about 25,000 of those memos to train its AI search tool. "In other words, Ross built its competing product using bulk memos, which in turn were built from Westlaw headnotes," the judge's memo explains. "When Thomson Reuters found out, it sued Ross for copyright infringement." Headnotes are short summaries of uncopyrightable court opinions offered to Westlake clients, so there's some disagreement among legal experts about the extent to which these snippets of text should qualify for copyright protection, individually or as part of a compilation. Judge Bibas initially concluded that the headnotes shared enough similarity with uncopyrightable court opinions that they could not qualify for copyright protection. But he changed his mind based on a sculpting analogy, as he explained in his memo: Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman took issue with that analogy in a write-up expressing surprise at the court ruling. "The court's analogy to chiseling marble is wholly unpersuasive because sculptors have a wide range of freedom to express themselves, while summarizers of court opinions do not," he wrote. "To the extent the court is saying that there's an individual copyright that comes from picking and choosing the interesting quotes out of a court opinion, I vigorously disagree." The court's analogy to chiseling marble is wholly unpersuasive A critical factor in the judge's decision is that Ross Intelligence used Westlake content to develop a competing legal research tool. The judge determined that Ross's use is not "transformative," one of four tests to assess whether fair use can be claimed as a defense. Another test under the law is the impact the use of copyrighted content has on the market for the original work. There, the judge determined that Ross used Westlake's content to compete with it. "Ross took the headnotes to make it easier to develop a competing legal research tool," the judge wrote. "So Ross's use is not transformative. Because the AI landscape is changing rapidly, I note for readers that only non-generative AI is before me today." Despite the judge's directive that his decision does not apply to generative AI - the case dates back to May 6, 2020, before ChatGPT - Edward Lee, professor of law at Santa Clara University, believes other courts hearing generative AI cases will consider judge Bibas's reasoning. Judge Bibas's decision has great significance "In the near term, Judge Bibas's decision has great significance," Edward Lee, professor of law at Santa Clara University, told The Register. "Even though he qualified it as not involving generative AI, we can expect every plaintiff in the 30-plus copyright lawsuits to be citing this decision to the respective courts and asking them to adopt the same analysis. "However, in the mid term, this decision is only one district court decision. Many other judges and potentially juries will decide fair use defense in the other cases. And we all should expect the fair use issue of training of AI models will go to the Supreme Court. Maybe not in this case, but one or more of the AI lawsuits. The issue is too important to the country for the Supreme Court to ignore it." But even before the judge's decision, AI firms appear to have taken note of the accumulation of AI copyright lawsuits and reassessed their potential liability exposure. Anthropic in January settled a lyrics copyright claim brought by Universal Music and other publishers. And OpenAI, which succeeded in having a copyright claim tossed last November, has been making content licensing deals with publishers amid lobbying to force AI firms to pay for training data. ®

Thomson Reuters Secures Major Win in AI Copyright Battle

Thomson Reuters scored a major victory in its AI copyright lawsuit against Ross Intelligence, a now-defunct legal startup. The lawsuit, filed in 2020, accused Ross Intelligence of using copyrighted content from Thomson Reuters' Westlaw platform to create an AI-powered competitor. On Tuesday, US Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas dismissed Ross Intelligence's fair-use defense and ruled that the startup had infringed on Thomson Reuters' copyright. Westlaw provides paid users access to judicial decisions, state and federal regulations, law journals, editorials, and headnotes. In this case, the copyrighted material involved those headnotes, which are "summaries of specific points of law addressed in a particular case, drafted by Westlaw Attorney Editors." Ross had earlier claimed its use of the headnotes as "innocent infringement," which Judge Bibas dismissed on Tuesday, stating that Westlaw's headnotes clearly bear a copyright notice. The judge also dismissed Ross' fair use defense on Westlaw's headnotes, considering four factors: the use of the copyrighted work, commercial or nonprofit; the nature of the copyrighted work; and "how Ross's use affected the copyrighted work's value or potential market." Judge Bibas' decision on the four factors was split 2-2 between the two firms. However, he added that the fourth factor outweighed the rest, and since Ross used the copyrighted content to build a competitor, it violated the law. While this is a landmark ruling in AI copyright lawsuits, Bibas noted that Ross's product was not generative AI. The case pertains to "copying written words" without permission. Still, it comes as multiple AI companies are facing lawsuits from publishers that claim their work was scraped without permission to train large language models (LLMs). The most notable one is The New York Times' copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. News Corp. has also sued Perplexity, while several large Canadian news organizations sued OpenAI. Other publishers have opted to sign content-sharing deals rather than fight it out in court. Vox Media and The Atlantic have a deal with OpenAI, while Axios has a partnership with Meta.

Media company Thomson Reuters wins AI copyright case

A judge ruled in favour of Thomson Reuters, saying that a law firm's use of their legal content to train an artificial intelligence model went against US copyright laws. Thomson Reuters has won an early battle in court about whether artificial intelligence (AI) programs can train on copyrighted material. The media company filed a lawsuit in 2020 against now-defunct legal research firm Ross Intelligence. In it, Thomson Reuters argues the company used their own legal platform Westlaw to train an AI model without permission. In his decision, judge Stephanos Bibas affirmed that Ross Intelligence was not permitted under US copyright law, known as the "fair use doctrine," to use the company's content in order to build a competing platform. The "fair use" doctrine of US laws allows for limited uses of copyrighted materials such as for teaching, research, or transforming the copyrighted work into something different. "We are pleased that the court granted summary judgment in our favour," according to a statement from Thomson Reuters to Euronews Next. "The copying of our content was not 'fair use'". Ross Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Euronews Next. Thomson Reuters' win comes as a growing number of lawsuits have been filed by authors, visual artists, and music labels against developers of AI models over similar issues. What links each of these cases is the claim that tech companies ingested huge troves of human writings to train AI chatbots to produce human-like passages of text, without getting permission or compensating the people who wrote the original works.

Some Good News for Hollywood Creators Suing AI Companies

Paramount to Turn Over Records on Skydance Deal Amid Standoff With FCC Copyright law bars a former competitor of Thomson Reuters from using the company's content to create an artificial intelligence-based legal platform, a court has ruled in a decision that could lay the foundation for similar rulings over the legality of using copyrighted works to train AI systems. U.S. District Judge Stephanos Bibas on Tuesday rejected arguments from Ross Intelligence that it's protected by the "fair use" exception to copyright protections. The court's ruling on the novel issue will likely be cited by creators suing tech companies across Hollywood, though the case doesn't involve the creation of new content created by AI systems. "Originality is central to copyright," Bibas wrote. Shortly after the court issued the ruling, Concord Music Group moved for a federal judge overseeing its lawsuit against Amazon-owned Anthropic over the use song lyrics to train Claude to consider the order in its evaluation of the case. The case revolves around Thomson Reuters legal research platform in which users pay to access information regarding case law, state and federal statutes, law journals and regulations. Content includes headnotes that summarize key points of law and case holdings, which are copyrighted. Ross, a now-defunct AI company backed by venture firm Y Combinator, used a form of those headnotes to train a competing legal search engine after Thomson Reuters declined to license the content. The key difference between this case and other AI lawsuits is that there was an intermediary that repurposed the copyrighted work for AI training. In lawsuits against OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic, among others, creators allege wholesale copying of material. In Tuesday's ruling, Bibas found that Ross may have infringed on more than 2,200 headnotes. To decide damages, a jury will determine whether any of Thomson Reuters' copyrights have expired. The court's decision turned, in part, on whether the headnotes constitute original works protected by intellectual property law. Bibas, who ruled in favor of Ross Intelligence on summary judgment in 2023 in a decision that was withdrawn shortly before trial, sided with Thomson Reuters on the issue since headnotes can "introduce creativity by distilling, synthesizing, or explaining part of an opinion." "More than that, each headnote is an individual, copyrightable work," the judge wrote. "That became clear to me once I analogized the lawyer's editorial judgment to that of a sculptor. A block of raw marble, like a judicial opinion, is not copyrightable. Yet a sculptor creates a sculpture by choosing what to cut away and what to leave in place. That sculpture is copyrightable." Also of note: Bibas declining to find fair use, which provides protection for the utilization of copyrighted material to make another work as long as it's "transformative." On this issue, he noted that Ross intended to profit off of its use of Thomson Reuters headnotes, which "disfavors fair use." The court stressed, "Even taking all facts in favor of Ross, it meant to compete with Westlaw by developing a market substitute. And it does not matter whether Thomson Reuters has used the data to train its own legal search tools; the effect on a potential market for AI training data is enough." The court pointed several times to the Supreme Court's decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, which effectively reined in fair use. In that case, the majority said that an analysis of whether an allegedly infringing work was sufficiently transformed must be balanced against the "commercial nature of the use." Creators are leveraging that ruling to argue that AI companies could've simply licensed the copyrighted material and that the markets for their works were undermined. Randy McCarthy, an intellectual property lawyer at Hall Estill, says that the court's ruling will be "heralded by existing groups of artists and content creators as the key to their case against the other generative AI systems." He adds, "One thing is clear, merely using copyrighted material as training data to an AI cannot be said to be fair use per se." Whether the legal doctrine applies remains among the primary battlegrounds for the mainstream adoption of AI.

Thomson Reuters scores early win in AI copyright battles in the US

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Thomson Reuters has won an early battle in court over the question of fair use in artificial intelligence-related copyright cases. The media and technology company filed a lawsuit against Ross Intelligence -- a now-defunct legal research firm -- in 2020, arguing they had used materials from Thomson Reuters' own legal platform Westlaw to train an AI model without permission. Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision Tuesday that affirmed Ross Intelligence was not permitted under U.S. copyright law to use the company's content in order to build a competing platform. Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In his summary judgment, Bibas said that "none of Ross's possible defenses holds water" and ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters on the issue of "fair use." The "fair use" doctrine of U.S. laws allows for limited uses of copyrighted materials such as for teaching, research or transforming the copyrighted work into something different. Thomson Reuters' win comes as a growing number of lawsuits have been filed by authors, visual artists and music labels against developers of AI models over similar issues. What links each of these cases is the claim that tech companies ingested huge troves of human writings to train AI chatbots to produce human-like passages of text, without getting permission or compensating the people who wrote the original works. OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft have also battled copyright infringement cases led by writers such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and "Game of Thrones" novelist George R. R. Martin; and another set of lawsuits from media outlets such as The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Mother Jones.

Thomson Reuters scores early win in AI copyright battles in the U.S.

Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision Tuesday that affirmed Ross Intelligence was not permitted under U.S. copyright law to use the company's content in order to build a competing platform. Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In his summary judgment, Bibas said that "none of Ross's possible defenses holds water" and ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters on the issue of "fair use." The "fair use" doctrine of U.S. laws allows for limited uses of copyrighted materials such as for teaching, research or transforming the copyrighted work into something different. Thomson Reuters' win comes as a growing number of lawsuits have been filed by authors, visual artists and music labels against developers of AI models over similar issues. What links each of these cases is the claim that tech companies ingested huge troves of human writings to train AI chatbots to produce human-like passages of text, without getting permission or compensating the people who wrote the original works. OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft have also battled copyright infringement cases led by writers such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and "Game of Thrones" novelist George R. R. Martin; and another set of lawsuits from media outlets such as The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Mother Jones.

Thomson Reuters Scores Early Win in AI Copyright Battles in the US

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Thomson Reuters has won an early battle in court over the question of fair use in artificial intelligence-related copyright cases. The media and technology company filed a lawsuit against Ross Intelligence -- a now-defunct legal research firm -- in 2020, arguing they had used materials from Thomson Reuters' own legal platform Westlaw to train an AI model without permission. Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision Tuesday that affirmed Ross Intelligence was not permitted under U.S. copyright law to use the company's content in order to build a competing platform. Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In his summary judgment, Bibas said that "none of Ross's possible defenses holds water" and ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters on the issue of "fair use." The "fair use" doctrine of U.S. laws allows for limited uses of copyrighted materials such as for teaching, research or transforming the copyrighted work into something different. Thomson Reuters' win comes as a growing number of lawsuits have been filed by authors, visual artists and music labels against developers of AI models over similar issues. What links each of these cases is the claim that tech companies ingested huge troves of human writings to train AI chatbots to produce human-like passages of text, without getting permission or compensating the people who wrote the original works. OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft have also battled copyright infringement cases led by writers such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and "Game of Thrones" novelist George R. R. Martin; and another set of lawsuits from media outlets such as The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Mother Jones. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Thomson Reuters wins AI copyright 'fair use' ruling against one-time competitor

(Reuters) - A federal judge in Delaware on Tuesday said that a former competitor of Thomson Reuters was not permitted by U.S. copyright law to copy the information and technology company's content to build a competing artificial intelligence-based legal platform. U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas' decision against defunct legal-research firm Ross Intelligence marks the first U.S. ruling on the closely watched question of fair use in AI-related copyright litigation. Fair use is a principle that allows the unauthorized use of copyright-protected works under certain circumstances. The legal theory represents a key defense for tech companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms in a series of copyright cases brought by authors, record labels, visual artists and others over the use of their material to train AI systems. Tech companies argue that generative AI systems make fair use of copyrighted material by studying it to learn to create new content, while copyright owners say the companies use their work to generate competing content that threatens their livelihoods. A Thomson Reuters spokesperson welcomed the decision. "We are pleased that the court granted summary judgment in our favor and concluded that Westlaw's editorial content, created and maintained by our attorney editors, is protected by copyright and cannot be used without our consent. The copying of our content was not 'fair use,'" the company said in a statement. Thomson Reuters is the parent company of Reuters News. Attorneys and spokespeople for Ross did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Bibas reconsidered his previous decision that determining fair use should be left to a jury at a trial on Thomson Reuters' copyright infringement claims against Ross. "I studied the case materials more closely and realized that my prior summary-judgment ruling had not gone far enough," Bibas said on Tuesday. The judge determined that a jury should still consider the underlying case. (Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by David Bario and Rosalba O'Brien)

Thomson Reuters wins an early court battle over AI, copyright, and fair use

AI companies have all kinds of arguments against paying for copyrighted content In building a legal research search engine, Ross turned the annotations and headnotes "into numerical data about the relationships among legal words to feed into its AI," wrote Bibas. The ruling describes how, after Thomson Reuters rejected its attempt to license Westlaw's content, Ross turned to another company, LegalEase, and purchased 25,000 Bulk Memos of questions and answers written by lawyers using the Westlaw headnotes that it used for training data.

Judge Sides With Thomson Reuters in AI Copyright Dispute - Decrypt

On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled in favor of Reuters' parent company, Thomson Reuters, in their lawsuit against legal AI developer Ross Intelligence. U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas said he was revising his 2023 summary judgment opinion on the case, court documents show. The ruling stems from a May 2020 lawsuit in which Thomson Reuters accused San Franciso-based Ross Intelligence of unlawfully copying content from its Westlaw platform to train its AI using data acquired from Michigan-based LegalEase Solutions. Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, media outlets, artists, and authors have expressed concerns that their content was being used to train AI models. Many, including Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin, John Grisham, and Michael Connelly, have sued developers, accusing them of using their work without permission or compensation. In December 2023, the New York Times sued OpenAI, alleging its articles were used to train ChatGPT. "In my 2023 opinion, I denied summary judgment on fair use," Judge Bibas wrote. "But with new information and understanding, I vacate those sections of that order and its accompanying opinion addressing fair use. Fair use is an affirmative defense, so Ross bears the burden of proof." Judge Bibas explained that after Ross was denied a license to use Westlaw content, it acquired training data from LegalEase -- a research and writing service provider that offers outsourced legal support -- which provided 'Bulk Memos' or collections of legal queries and responses. "LegalEase sold Ross roughly 25,000 Bulk Memos, which Ross used to train its AI search tool," Bibas wrote. "In other words, Ross built its competing product using Bulk Memos, which in turn were built from Westlaw headnotes. When Thomson Reuters found out, it sued Ross for copyright infringement." LegalEase, according to Judge Bibas, provided a guide explaining how to create the questions and answers using Westlaw headnotes. The guide instructed users not to copy and paste the headnotes directly. "The parties agree that LegalEase had access to Westlaw and used it to make the Bulk Memos," Judge Bibas wrote. "Of course, access alone is not proof. However, when a Bulk Memo question resembles a headnote more than the original judicial opinion, it strongly suggests actual copying." Judge Bibas found that Ross Intelligence infringed on 2,243 headnotes, with the only remaining factual question being whether some of their copyrights had expired. He also ruled that Ross Intelligence's defenses -- including innocent infringement, copyright misuse, merger, and scenes à faire -- fail. "Smart man knows when he is right; a wise man knows when he is wrong," Judge Bibas wrote. "Wisdom does not always find me, so I try to embrace it when it does--even if it comes late, as it did here."