The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that Ross Intelligence infringed on Thomson Reuters' copyrights. The company utilized editorial annotations from the Westlaw legal research platform to train its own AI-powered legal search tool.
Ross Intelligence collaborated with contractor LegalEase Solutions to create training datasets. These sets incorporated Westlaw annotations, which are summaries written by editors to highlight specific legal aspects of court rulings.
Ross argued that the annotations were not eligible for copyright protection and claimed fair use for AI training purposes. The court rejected these arguments, affirming that the annotations possess sufficient originality due to the editorial decisions involved.
The court determined that the use was not transformative, as Ross aimed to compete directly in the legal research market. The judges concluded that the unauthorized use of editorial work could damage the market value of Westlaw and hinder potential licensing opportunities for AI training data.
