GoKawiilThird Circuit rules Ross Intelligence's AI training on Westlaw headnotes was copyright infringement
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ross Intelligence infringed Thomson Reuters' copyrights by using Westlaw headnotes, created with help from LegalEase Solutions, to train a competing legal research AI. The court rejected Ross's claims that the headnotes lacked sufficient originality for copyright protection and that training an AI system on them constituted fair use.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The ruling offers one of the first appellate-level interpretations of how fair use applies to AI training data when the resulting product directly competes with the source material's creator. Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves framed the case as an ordinary copyright dispute rather than a novel AI question, which could signal to other courts that existing copyright doctrine applies squarely to AI training disputes without requiring new legal frameworks. This may embolden other publishers and content creators pursuing similar claims against AI companies.
- The Third Circuit found Ross Intelligence liable for copyright infringement over its use of Westlaw headnotes in AI training.
- The court ruled the headnotes met the low bar for originality required for copyright protection, rejecting Ross's argument otherwise.
- Using copyrighted material to train an AI system that competes with the original product was deemed not to qualify as fair use.
Source: techspot.com — Skye Jacobs, 2026-10-01
Published there as: “A court just ruled that training an AI on someone else's editorial work isn't fair use”
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