Thomson Reuters has secured an early legal victory in the ongoing debate over fair use in AI-related copyright cases. The media and technology company sued Ross Intelligence—a now-defunct legal research firm—in 2020, alleging that it unlawfully used content from its legal platform, Westlaw, to train an AI model without authorisation.
Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a decision on Tuesday that Ross Intelligence was not entitled to use Thomson Reuters’ content under US copyright law to develop a competing platform.
According to the Associated Press, Bibas, in the summary judgment, concluded that “none of Ross’s possible defenses holds water” and ruled in Reuters’ favour regarding the “fair use” matter.
Under US law, the “fair use” doctrine permits limited use of copyrighted materials for purposes such as teaching, research, or creating a transformative work.
In an email to WIRED, Reuters’ representative Jeffrey McCoy expressed satisfaction with the verdict, stating that: “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,” he wrote. “The copying of our content was not ‘fair use.’”
Reuters’ victory emerges amidst an increasing number of legal challenges initiated by creators, artists and music companies against AI system developers over comparable concerns.
The common thread in these legal disputes is the allegation that technology firms utilised vast collections of human-authored content to train their AI systems for generating text that mimics human writing, without seeking authorisation or offering payment to the original content creators.
OpenAI and its commercial partner Microsoft are facing copyright infringement lawsuits from renowned authors, including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and “Game of Thrones” creator George R.R. Martin, as well as separate legal challenges from major media outlets such as The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Mother Jones.
