Judge Stephanos Bibas rejected Ross Intelligence Inc.'s fair-use defense because two of the four fair use factors—the purpose of Ross’s use of headnotes from Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw legal research service and its harm to the market for the originals—favor Thomson Reuters, according to the opinion filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Delaware.
Bibas partially granted summary judgment on Thomson Reuters’ direct copyright infringement claims on more than 2,000 headnotes, leaving open the factual question whether copyright protection has expired for any of them. He left the question of whether another more than 5,000 headnotes were infringed to a jury at an upcoming trial.
The lawsuit, filed in 2020, was one of the first copyright cases alleging infringement through the development of AI products. The fair-use defense is central to a pile of copyright lawsuits brought by authors, publishers, and others from creative industries against companies including
Hours after Bibas’ decision was filed, music publishers suing AI developer Anthropic PBC over its use of copyrighted song lyrics to train its Claude generative AI model filed a notice of supplemental authority to share the opinion with the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
Thomson Reuters accused Ross of copying summaries of important legal topics in judicial opinions and other proprietary information for an AI search engine its users can interrogate to receive direct quotations from court opinions.
“Ross took the headnotes to make it easier to develop a competing legal research tool,” Bibas wrote. “So Ross’s use is not transformative.”
The decision is effectively a reversal by Bibas of his own 2023 decision largely denying Thomson Reuters summary judgment on infringement and fair use. Explaining why he rescinded that order and delayed a trial that had been set for August 2024, he wrote in the opinion, “I studied the case materials more closely and realized that my prior summary-judgment ruling had not gone far enough.”
Acknowledging that “the AI landscape is changing rapidly,” Bibas said, “I note for readers that only non-generative AI is before me today.”
“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,” Thomson Reuters said in an emailed statement.
Ross’ attorney didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
Crowell & Moring LLP and Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP represent Ross. Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP and Kirkland & Ellis LLP represent Thomson Reuters.
Bloomberg Law competes with Westlaw in providing legal research services.
The case is Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v. Ross Intelligence Inc., D. Del., No. 1:20-cv-00613, opinion filed 2/11/25.
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