Source: LawFuel

LawFuel reports on a major legal battle filed in Washington, D.C., around December 22, 2025, involving Fastcase (now owned by Clio) and the Canadian AI research platform Alexi. Fastcase alleges that Alexi violated its data license agreement by using licensed case law not just for permitted "internal research," but to train commercial generative AI models and display full-text decisions to users. The complaint asserts that Alexi transformed from a partner into a direct competitor by misappropriating Fastcase’s proprietary database to build a rival legal research tool.

The lawsuit claims breach of contract, trademark infringement, and trade secret misappropriation. Crucially, Fastcase is seeking an injunction that would require Alexi to destroy not only the datasets in question but also the AI models trained on them, arguing that the model weights themselves constitute infringing derivative works. The plaintiff also contends that Alexi misleadingly used "View on Fastcase" buttons in its interface, implying a partnership that did not exist for those commercial purposes.

This case highlights significant risks for the legal tech industry, particularly regarding the interpretation of "internal use" clauses in data licenses. LawFuel notes that this litigation serves as a warning for law firms and tech vendors to clearly define AI training rights in their contracts. It underscores that using third-party data to train commercial models without explicit permission is becoming a high-stakes liability, potentially threatening the existence of AI products built on such data.