Summary
Thomson Reuters sued ROSS Intelligence in May 2020, alleging the AI/legal research company unlawfully copied content from Thomson Reuter’s legal research platform Westlaw for the purpose of training its AI-based platform. In February 2025, the court granted summary judgment that such copying was not fair use, emphasizing that the purpose of ROSS’s copying was to build a directly competing product. In April 2025, the court certified the fair use question to the Third Circuit.
What We’re Watching
On June 17, 2025, ROSS filed notice of appeal in the Third Circuit, pursuant to Judge Bibas’s order certifying the case for interlocutory appellate review. The two issues at hand are: (1) whether the West headnotes and West Key Number System are original as a matter of law and (2) whether ROSS’s alleged use of the headnotes was fair use. Note, Judge Bibas remains confident in the holding that ROSS created a non-transformative market substitute for Westlaw that does not qualify it for defense under fair use.