• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 20, 2025

Artificial intelligence company Ross Intelligence, which sells legal research tools, is seeking to immediately appeal a landmark ruling that it infringed copyright by training its service on material published by the competing service Westlaw, owned by Thomson Reuters.

“This copyright case presents urgent questions governing the innovation at the heart of America’s preeminence -- at least for now -- in artificial intelligence systems,” Ross argues in a motion filed asking Judge Stephanos Bibas in Delaware to authorize an appeal of his February ruling to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ross adds that Bibas's ruling will be used to “stop fair learning based on factual statements,” and will result in “a pronounced chill” in innovation.

The motion comes in a dispute dating to 2020, when Thomson Reuters alleged that Ross wrongly trained its legal research platform on Westlaw “headnotes,” which are summaries of key points in legal opinions.

Ross argued that it should prevail for numerous reasons, including that it made fair use of the material.

Bibas rejected that argument, essentially holding that Ross's use of the material didn't qualify for fair use because the company used Westlaw's headnotes for the same purpose as Thomson Reuters, and because Ross intended to develop a product that would substitute for Westlaw's in the market.

“Ross’s use is not transformative because it does not have a 'further purpose or different character' from Thomson Reuters’s,” he wrote.

The judge added that he planned to have a jury decide remaining factual questions in the case, including whether some of Thomson Reuters' copyrights had expired.

Ross argues that conducting a jury trial now – before an appellate court has ruled on the fair use questions at the heart of the dispute – would waste resources. The artificial intelligence company adds that the legal issues in the case – including whether headnotes are even copyrightable – should be decided by an appellate court.