Thompson Reuters vs. Ross lawsuit

Extracted Attributes

• Court

  U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware

• Judge

  Stephanos Bibas

• Defendant

  Ross Intelligence

• Plaintiff

  Thomson Reuters

• Subject Matter

  Copyright infringement of Westlaw headnotes and Key Number System

• Infringed Material

  Westlaw headnotes and Key Number System

• Defendant's Product

  AI-driven legal research search engine

• Legal Principle at Issue

  Fair Use (Copyright) in the context of AI training

• Number of Infringed Headnotes

  2,243

• Defendant's Method of Infringement

  Used 'Bulk Memos' derived from Westlaw headnotes to train its AI

Timeline

• Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas initially largely denied Thomson Reuters' motions for summary judgment on copyright infringement and the fair use defense. (Source: web_search_results)

  2023

• The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware reversed its 2023 ruling and granted Thomson Reuters' motion for partial summary judgment on direct copyright infringement, rejecting Ross's fair use defense. The court found Ross infringed on 2,243 Westlaw headnotes. (Source: web_search_results)

  2025-02-11

• The judge issued an 11th-hour order postponing the scheduled trial to allow Ross Intelligence to file an interlocutory appeal of the partial grant of summary judgment. (Source: web_search_results)

  2025-04-10

• The judge presiding over the case issued a memorandum opinion explaining the postponement of the trial. (Source: web_search_results)

  2025-05-23

Personal and business legal affairs of Donald Trump

From 1973 until he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump and his businesses were involved in over 4,000 legal cases in United States federal and state courts, including battles with casino patrons, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, and over 100 business tax disputes. He has also been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault, with one accusation resulting in him being held civilly liable. In 2015, Trump's lawyer Alan Garten called Trump's legal entanglements "a natural part of doing business" in the U.S. While litigation is indeed common in the real estate industry, Trump has been involved in more legal cases than his fellow magnates Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., Donald Bren, Stephen M. Ross, Sam Zell, and Larry Silverstein combined. Many of the lawsuits were filed against patrons with debt to his casinos. Of all cases with a clear resolution, Trump was the victor 92 percent of the time. Numerous legal matters and investigations occurred during and after Trump's first presidency, some being of historical importance. Between October 2021 and July 2022 alone, the Republican National Committee paid more than US$2 million to attorneys representing Trump in his presidential, personal, and business capacities. In January 2023, a federal judge fined Trump and his attorney nearly $1 million, characterizing him as "a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries". On December 6, 2022, the parent company of Trump's many businesses, the Trump Organization, was convicted on 17 criminal charges. Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and is appealing an order to pay more than $80 million in damages to the victim, E. Jean Carroll. Trump, together with his associates, has also been found liable for fraud regarding overvaluation of the Trump Organization and Trump's net worth, and is appealing a $364 million fine plus $100 million interest. In 2024, Trump was convicted on numerous counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, although his sentencing was indefinitely postponed following his second election to the presidency. In 2024, before Trump's election, a judge dismissed the federal charges relating to Trump's handling of classified documents. After his election, the special counsel decided to abandon the federal charges related to the 2020 election, citing the Justice Department policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents.

Web Search Results

• Federal Court Sides with Plaintiff in the First Major AI Copyright ...

  Share this article:. Thomson Reuters, the owner of Westlaw, sued Ross for using Westlaw headnotes—summaries of key points of law and case holdings—to train a competing, AI-driven legal research search engine. In a 23-page opinion, the court granted Thomson Reuters’s partial motion for summary judgement on its direct infringement claim and rejected Ross’s fair use defense. [...] purpose as, and is a potential market substitute for, Westlaw. Thus, the court weighed the first and fourth copyright fair use factors in Thomson Reuters’s favor and held that Ross’s use was not a fair use. [...] While the _Thomson Reuters_ decision might be viewed as a hindrance to the AI development process, it is not the final word on the issue of copyright infringement in the AI training context. _First_, the decision could be reversed, remanded, or modified on appeal. That will depend on whether Ross appeals and on what grounds. _Second_, since Ross’s AI was _not_ a “generative AI” platform, expect defendants in other AI copyright cases to distinguish the decision and its rationale along with the

• Court shuts down AI fair use argument in Thomson Reuters ...

  Thomson Reuters sued Ross Intelligence (Ross) alleging that Ross infringed its copyrights where Ross used Thomson Reuters’s Westlaw headnotes to train Ross’s new AI legal-research search engine. Thomson Reuters owns Westlaw, a prominent legal research platform that includes legal materials and editorial content, like headnotes, that summarize key points of law and case holdings and is organized using the “Key Number System,” both of which Thomson Reuters claims as its copyrighted material. [...] The court granted partial summary judgment for Thomson Reuters on its claims of direct infringement and fair use, while denying Ross’s defenses – finding that Ross infringed on 2,243 Westlaw headnotes – and upheld the validity of Thomson Reuters’s copyrights, with the exception of those that may have expired. The court rejected Ross’s arguments that its use of the headnotes was innocent (noting that this defense is not applicable where the infringed work bears a copyright notice) or justified [...] Initially in 2023, Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas largely denied Thomson Reuters’s motions for summary judgment on copyright infringement and the fair use defense. But after reviewing the case materials more closely, Judge Bibas chose to reconsider his decision and invited the parties to renew their summary judgment briefings. Ross argued the following defenses: (1) innocent infringement, (2) copyright misuse, (3) merger, (4) scènes á faire and (5) fair use. The court quickly dispensed of the

• Fair Use Defense Failed in Thomson Reuters v. Ross, Jury Still Out ...

  On February 11, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware reversed course from its 2023 ruling and granted Thomson Reuters’ motion for summary judgment on direct copyright infringement and fair use. In Thomson Reuters Enter. Ctr. GmbH v. Ross Intel. Inc., the court found that Westlaw’s headnotes exhibited enough of a “creative spark” to be considered “original,” “copyrightable” works and that Ross’ use of Westlaw headnotes to create a competing legal tool did not constitute a [...] direct copyright infringement and fair use. In Thomson Reuters Enter. Ctr. GmbH v. Ross Intel. Inc., the court found that Westlaw’s headnotes exhibited enough of a “creative spark” to be considered “original,” “copyrightable” works and that Ross’ use of Westlaw headnotes to create a competing legal tool did not constitute a “transformative” fair use under the standard set forth in the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Warhol case. Ross recently asked the court to pause the dispute [...] Thomson Reuters alleged that Ross directly infringed its copyrights by using Westlaw’s headnotes and Key Number System to train Ross’ AI legal search tool. More specifically, after being denied a license to use Westlaw’s legal research database for AI training purposes, Ross instead licensed 25,000 “Bulk Memos” from a third party to train its AI legal search tool. These Bulk Memos were “compilations of legal questions” created by lawyers who were instructed by the third party to use (though not

• Judge Explains Postponement of Trial In Thomson Reuters-Ross ...

  The case stems from allegations that Ross Intelligence, a now-shuttered AI-powered legal research startup, improperly used Thomson Reuters’ copyrighted Westlaw headnotes and Key Number system to train its competing legal research tool. Thomson Reuters, the legal publishing giant behind Westlaw, claims Ross scraped millions of headnotes – brief summaries that identify key legal principles in court decisions – to build its own search platform. [...] By Bob Ambrogi on May 23, 2025 TweetImage 3: twitterShareImage 4: linkedinShareImage 5: facebook The judge presiding over the long-running copyright litigation between Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence today issued a memorandum opinion explaining his April 10 issuance of an 11 th-hour order postponing the scheduled trial to allow Ross to file an interlocutory appeal of the judge’s partial grant of summary judgment.

• Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Provides Insight into How Courts May ...

  These cases are largely in the early stages without substantive rulings about copyright infringement. Recently, however, a Delaware District Court granted summary judgment ruling in part for Thomson Reuters in a case against ROSS Intelligence (ROSS), a firm that says it “builds AI-driven products to augment lawyers' cognitive abilities.” The court found that ROSS had infringed certain of Thomson Reuters’s copyrighted material and that ROSS could not benefit from a fair use defense. In doing so, [...] By way of brief factual background, ROSS obtained access to Thomson Reuters’s Westlaw headnotes—summaries of key points of law in a document—via “bulk memos” that ROSS obtained from a third party that had created those memos using Westlaw headnotes. The court found that Thomson Reuters has a valid copyright to the material, ROSS copied protected elements of Westlaw’s headnotes, and some headnotes and memos were substantially similar. [...] Finally, the fourth factor (the effect on the market for the original work), which the court noted was the most important factor, favored Thomson Reuters. Relevant to the analysis was the original market, which the judge identified as legal research platforms, and at least one potential derivative market, which the judge identified as data to train legal AIs. The court concluded that ROSS created a product that could substitute for Westlaw’s product and that ROSS’s activities had a potential