Source: LawNext

LawNext analyzes the latest developments in the high-stakes copyright battle between Thomson Reuters (TR) and ROSS Intelligence, currently before the Court of Appeals. In its latest brief, Thomson Reuters argues forcefully that ROSS's use of thousands of Westlaw "headnotes" to train its AI-powered legal research platform constitutes "theft, not innovation." TR contends that ROSS built its competing product not by developing independent technology, but by systematically misappropriating the proprietary, value-added content that Westlaw has curated over decades.

The case pivots on the "fair use" doctrine, with ROSS arguing that its use of the data was transformative and necessary to create a functional legal AI. However, TR maintains that allowing such copying would destroy the market for legal data and disincentivize the creation of reliable legal summaries. This appellate decision is poised to set a critical precedent for the "Generative AI" industry, defining whether and how AI companies can utilize copyrighted professional databases to train models that effectively compete with the original data owners.