On September 24 the US District Court for Delaware issued an opinion in the lawsuit between Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence Inc., addressing the parties’ motions for summary judgment on various claims and defenses, including copyright infringement. The court largely denied both parties’ motions for summary judgment, with small exceptions, so that he case will proceed to trial, where a jury will sort through the evidence and determine the outcome.
Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Westlaw, has taken legal action against Ross Intelligence Inc., an emerging artificial intelligence startup. The primary contention centers around allegations that Ross Intelligence unlawfully duplicated critical content from the renowned legal research platform, Westlaw.
The heart of the controversy lies in whether Ross Intelligence copied protected elements of Westlaw, both directly and through a third entity called LegalEase. LegalEase is acknowledged to have replicated at least sections of the headnotes from Westlaw. Notably, there’s no contention from Ross regarding LegalEase’s access to Westlaw, and thereby, to these headnotes. However, the precise details about the content that Ross Intelligence may have allegedly sourced from Westlaw remain ambiguously stated in the court’s opinion.
While Ross Intelligence has largely refuted the narrative presented by Thomson Reuters, both parties opted for summary judgment on several aspects of the case. Specifically, Thomson Reuters sought a summary judgment on their copyright infringement claim (pertaining to the 2,830 memos cited). Concurrently, motions for summary judgment were made by both entities on Ross’s defense of ‘fair use.’
As it is known, fair use is a legal doctrine that allows for the limited use of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright owner. The fair use doctrine is codified in Section 107 of the US Copyright Act, which sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether a particular use of copyrighted material is fair:
1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
In this case, the court noted that the first and fourth factors are the most important. The court also noted that fair use is a mixed question of law and fact, meaning that it involves both legal and factual determinations. Applying the fair use test requires a determination of subsidiary factual questions about the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use on the potential market for the copyrighted work.
The court ultimately found that the fair use defense raised by Ross Intelligence Inc. must go to a jury. The court noted that many of the critical facts in the case remained genuinely disputed, and that it was not the court’s role at summary judgment to sort through the evidence and tidy these factual messes. Therefore, the court denied both parties’ motions for summary judgment on the fair use defense, and the issue will be decided by a jury at trial.
Header image created with Microsoft Bing. Prompt: “Ross Intelligence copied protected elements of Westlaw, both directly and through a third entity called LegalEase”.
