Thompson Reuters and West Publishing vs Ross intelligence:
Copying protectable expression to create a competing substitute isn’t innovation: it’s theft. This basic principle is as true in the AI context as it is in any other. ROSS Intelligence Inc. copied copyrighted, editorial content from Westlaw, West Publishing Corporation and Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH’s (together, “TR”) legal research platform, to create its own legal research platform. Given those undisputed facts, Judge Bibas sitting by designation in the District of Delaware correctly held that, under binding Supreme Court precedent, ROSS’s creation of a direct substitute for Westlaw was copyright infringement and not fair use. D.I.770 (“Op.”).
In terms of copying protectable expression, this case is not about who owns “the law.” ROSS did not copy from Westlaw to get access to the law—it already had the law. This case is about ROSS’s copying of legal analysis, including at least 2,243 headnotes from Westlaw that its own expert found were dissimilar from the cases (the “West Headnotes”). For over a hundred years and as recently as 2020, the Supreme Court has upheld “the reporter’s copyright interest in
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