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Copyright claims against AI companies just got a potential boost.<\/p>\n
A U.S. federal judge last week handed down a summary judgment<\/a> in a case brought by tech conglomerate Thomson Reuters against legal tech firm Ross Intelligence. The judge found that Ross\u2019 use of Reuters\u2019 content to train its AI legal research platform infringed on Reuters\u2019 intellectual property.<\/p>\n The outcome could have implications for the more than 39 copyright-related AI lawsuits<\/a> currently working their way through U.S. courthouses. That said, it\u2019s not necessarily a slam dunk for plaintiffs who allege that AI companies violated their IP rights.<\/p>\n Ross was accused of using headnotes \u2014 summaries of legal decisions \u2014 from Westlaw, Reuters\u2019 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t find that argument particularly convincing.<\/p>\n Ross, Bibas said in his opinion, was repackaging Westlaw headnotes in a way that directly replicated Westlaw\u2019s legal research service. The startup\u2019s platform didn\u2019t add new meaning, purpose, or commentary, Bibas determined \u2014 undermining Ross\u2019 claim of transformative use.<\/p>\n In his decision, Bibas also cited Ross\u2019 commercial motivations as a reason the startup\u2019s defense missed the mark. Ross sought to profit from a product that competed directly with Westlaw,\u00a0and without significant \u201crecontextualization\u201d of the IP-protected Westlaw material.<\/p>\n Shubha Ghosh, a Syracuse University professor who studies IP law, called it a \u201cstrong victory\u201d for Thomson Reuters.<\/p>\n \u201cThe trial will proceed, [but] Thomson Reuters was awarded a summary judgment, a victory at this stage of the litigation,\u201d Ghosh said. \u201cThe judge also affirmed that Ross wasn\u2019t entitled to summary judgment on its defenses, such as fair use and merger.\u00a0As a consequence, the case continues to trial with a strong victory for Thomson Reuters.\u201d<\/p>\n Already, at least one set of plaintiffs in another AI copyright case have asked a court to consider Bibas\u2019 decision<\/a>. But it\u2019s not yet clear whether the precedent will sway other judges.<\/p>\n Bibas\u2019 opinion\u00a0made a point of distinguishing between \u201cgenerative AI\u201d and the AI that\u00a0Ross\u00a0was using, which didn\u2019t generate content but merely spit back judicial opinions that were already written.<\/p>\n Generative AI, which is at the center of copyright lawsuits against companies such as OpenAI<\/a> and Midjourney<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n Most companies developing generative AI argue that fair use doctrines<\/a> shield their practice of scraping data and using it for training without compensating \u2014 or even crediting \u2014 the data\u2019s owners. They argue that they\u2019re entitled to use any publicly available content for training and that their models are in effect outputting transformative works.<\/p>\nAll about the headnotes<\/h2>\n
Narrow in application<\/h2>\n