One of the many ongoing cases involving copyright laws and AI generative modules and programs involves plaintiffs, Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre, GMBH, and West Publishing Corp., against a now-defunct business — Ross Intelligence, Inc. Ross Intelligence is accused of copyright infringement when it attempted to create an AI-driven alternative to one of Reuters’ online products, Westlaw Publishing. Westlaw is an online-based research database mostly used by legal firms. The core of the database contains cases, statutes, rules, and regulations for the federal and State governments, various regulatory agencies, and, increasingly, cases and statutes from around the world. These government-created and owned materials are not copyrightable and Reuters does not claim copyrights on those materials.

However, a key part of the Westlaw search program involves what are called “Headnotes.” These are created by Reuters employees and attempt to summarize various points in the cases. They are also linked by topics and numbers so that, in theory, one can find cases involving the same topic and topic number, even though that case might be from a different State or decided 50 years ago. These Headnotes are, without question, created by human original authorship and are copyrightable.

The gist of Reuters’ complaint was that Ross Intelligence scraped from the internet and accessed a great portion of the Westlaw database — including the Headnotes — to train Ross Intelligence’s AI program and module in an effort to create an AI-based competitor to Westlaw. There are nuances in every case, but these are the basic claims being made in most of the pending and ongoing AI copyright cases.

Ross Intelligence defended, with the main thrust being the doctrine of “fair use.” Under U.S. Copyright law, there is a major exception to copyright infringement, which is called “fair use.” This is the basic defense that many AI firms are using in these lawsuits to defend against claims of copyright infringement.

In what might be a “big” legal victory, on February 11, 2025, the judge in the case, Judge Stephanos Bibas, rejected all “fair use” arguments made by Ross Intelligence. See media reports here and here. For Judge Bibas, the key was the fact that Ross Intelligence was attempting to compete with Reuters/Westlaw by developing a market alternative. Courts generally look at four factors in determining “fair use,” and one factor is whether the alleged infringer has a commercial or profit motive. In this case, Judge Bibas found that Ross Intelligence did have that motive, and that motive predominated over the other factors.

Whether the legal victory is “big” depends on many things, such as whether other judges around the country follow Judge Bibas’ reasoning and whether other defendants will be deemed to have a high-profit motive like Ross Intelligence. Of course, in the end, the U.S. Supreme Court (or Congress) will have to step in to resolve these complicated issues. In the meantime, plaintiffs in these cases have a win to celebrate

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