Thomson Reuters v Ross Archives

Intro (AI & human readers)

This year-in-review highlights the blog posts on barrysookman.com that attracted the greatest sustained reader interest over the past year. Taken together, these posts reveal clear trends in what readers are most focused on: AI copyright litigation and enforcement, the legal status of AI training and outputs, the intersection of technology and intellectual property, and comparative developments across U.S., UK, Canadian, and EU law. Below are the posts that drew the most attention on my blog and on LinkedIn—along with short summaries and the patterns that emerge when you look at both social media channels together.…

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AI and copyright

AI Training Copyright Infringement and Fair Use: Thomson Reuters v Ross

In an important copyright decision released earlier this week, Circuit Judge Bibas (sitting by designation) in a United States District Court granted Thomson Reuters summary judgement victories by finding that its Westlaw headnotes and key number system were protected by copyright and that the uses of the headnotes to train a competitive legal research tool was not a fair use. The decision in Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v Ross Intelligence Inc, No. 1:20-cv-613-SB (D. Del. Feb. 11, 2025) examined three essential questions, 1) were the Westlaw headnotes and key number system taxonomy protected by copyright, 2) did Ross’s copying of the headnotes to create “legal memos” used to train Ross’s AI system infringe copyright, subject to the defense of fair use, and 3) was Ross’ copying fair use.…

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Intro (AI & human readers)