Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog provides an in-depth analysis of the copyright infringement case Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, highlighting its significant implications for the governance of artificial intelligence. The lawsuit revolves around allegations that legal tech start-up Ross Intelligence unlawfully scraped large amounts of proprietary content from Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw platform to train its AI-powered legal research tool. Ross defends its actions under the “fair use” doctrine, arguing that its use of the material was transformative, and the case is now approaching a rare jury trial.

The author argues that this case is a crucial test for applying fair use to AI training and data scraping. The court’s decisions—particularly on whether Ross’s intermediate copying of Westlaw data for training constitutes fair use—will have far-reaching consequences for the AI industry. A verdict in favor of Thomson Reuters could significantly restrict how AI models are trained by requiring licences for training data and raising development costs; conversely, a win for Ross would bolster the fair use defence for AI companies. The article concludes that the case will influence not only the legal tech sector but also broader discussions on AI governance, copyright law and the balance between innovation and intellectual property rights.