Thomson Reuters wins AI copyright case: new precedent or one-off?

A US court has ruled that using copyrighted content to train AI without permission is not fair use. But its verdict doesn’t necessarily apply to generative AI, so the broader impact of the case is still unclear, experts say.

The case in question pitted media and news conglomerate Thomson Reuters, owner of the Reuters news service, against Ross Intelligence, a now-defunct service that offered users access to a database of court cases compiled through machine learning technology.

In 2020, Thomson Reuters sued Ross Intelligence for copyright infringement, alleging that Ross had scraped Thomson Reuters’ law database, called Westlaw, to create its own database. The plaintiff said this amounted to copyright infringement.

Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ross was not permitted under US copyright law to use Westlaw’s content to build a competing platform.

In his summary judgment, Bibas said that “none of Ross’s possible defenses holds water” and ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters on the issue of “fair use.”

The fair use doctrine of US laws allows for limited uses of copyrighted materials such as teaching, research, or transforming the copyrighted work into something different.

In the judge's view, though, Ross couldn’t use fair use as copyright defense. Besides, it’s noteworthy that the case focuses on training the model rather than its output.

Authors, visual artists, and music labels have filed several lawsuits against AI model developers over similar issues.

For example, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023, accusing them of using millions of the newspaper’s articles without permission to help train AI models, including those underpinning ChatGPT. OpenAI cited fair use in reply.

That’s why, according to Alon Yamin, co-founder and CEO of Copyleaks, Tuesday’s decision can have a significant impact on the AI, media, and entertainment industries.

“This ruling reinforces a critical precedent: AI companies cannot rely on fair use as a blanket defense for scraping copyrighted content. The court’s decision highlights the importance of respecting intellectual property rights, especially when AI models are being trained on proprietary materials,” Yamin told Cybernews.

“As AI adoption accelerates, companies must prioritize compliance and data usage transparency,” he added.

Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and others use generative AI, which creates something new, if not necessarily entirely original, meaning that fair use could be possible.

Or not. That’s because the judge noted in the ruling that it does not necessarily apply to generative AI, the kind of AI that writes new content itself.

“It is undisputed that Ross’s AI is not generative AI. Rather, when a user enters a legal question, Ross spits back relevant judicial opinions that have already been written,” wrote the judge.

According to some experts, this makes the issue less clear-cut. Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and others use generative AI, which creates something new, if not necessarily entirely original, meaning that fair use could be possible.

Harry Surden, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School, fears judges overseeing other AI copyright lawsuits may not take into account the differences between the cases.

“This is likely to confuse judges and others on the issue of generative AI, but there are significant differences that are very subtle, and most people will miss,” Surden told Business Insider.

“It's both a different technology, and the company was acting kind of duplicitously here.”

We'll probably find out if there's clear shift soon enough. The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday that The Atlantic, Politico, Vox and other major publishers are now suing AI startup Cohere for copyright and trademark infringement, escalating the news industry’s legal battle over the technology.

"This lawsuit is another example of publishers pushing back against AI companies seemingly exploiting copyrighted material without proper permissions. As AI’s popularity grows, we’re witnessing a reckoning that will define how intellectual property is respected in the digital age," Yamin told Cybernews.