THOMSON REUTERS WINS A.I. FAIR USE CASEOn September 29, 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the Thirds Circuit upheld a district court judgment and ruled in favor of Thomas Reuters (the owner of the legal research engine, Westlaw) and against Ross Intelligence rejecting its fair use defense. Ross was a competing platform to Westlaw which took down its search engine in 2021 indicating that it did so because of the cost of the litigation. 

Ross used Westlaw’s summaries known as “headnotes.” Ross asserted as a defense that its use of the headnotes to construct its training data was fair use. Headnotes are brief summaries of legal points in a court’s decision. 

The Fair use defense provides for limited use of copyrighted works without the permission of the owner. It analyses four factors:

1. Purpose and Character of the Use

2. Nature of the Copyrighted Work

3. Amount and Substantiality Used

4. Effect on the Potential Market

A brief in the case was filed by The Recording Association of America and the National Music Publishers Association. The brief argued that training an A.I. model on copyrighted works with the intention of creating a competing service or product “cannot qualify as fair use.” The RIAA and NIMP brief noted:

“But as daunting as past challenges have been, they are dwarfed in scope and jeopardy by A.I. services that produce digital files that emulate and compete with human-authored music.

To train these models, A.I. companies unlawfully duplicate virtually all copyrighted music on the internet to ensure that the resulting outputs sound credibly similar in style and genre to the music on which the models were trained and to the music users seek in prompting the models.

The resulting outputs are proliferating in the marketplace at alarming rates. They flood streaming platforms, displace human-authored music, dilute royalty pools by diverting payments to fictional bands, and deceive consumers, who cannot tell whether they are listening to human artists or digital files created by a computer.”

The judge in the court of appeals case stated:

“Ross took an intermediate step of using the headnotes to train an A.I. program, which arguably presents a slight degree of difference in use,” the judge wrote. “But the undisputed evidence demonstrates that Ross used the headnotes to train an A.I. program for the benefit of its legal-research platform.”

“The undisputed evidence reflects that Thomson Reuters’ materials possess a creative spark, and Ross aspired to be a direct competitor by using them for a highly similar purpose. We therefore hold that Thomson Reuters’ materials are copyrightable and that Ross’ use was not fair use.”

Thomson Reuters released a statement:

“We are pleased that the appellate court affirmed the trial court’s decision in our favor. The appellate court agreed that Westlaw’s editorial content ---- created and maintained by our attorney editors --- is protected by copyright and that Ross’ copying of Thomson Reuters content did not constitute fair use.”

There has been a proliferation in the last few years of cases regarding the use of A.I. This case is a landmark case which addresses several issues.

Glenn T. Litwak is a veteran music and entertainment attorney based in Santa Monica, CA. He has represented platinum selling recording artists, music producers and hit songwriters, as well as management and production companies, music publishers and independent record labels.  Glenn is also a frequent speaker at music industry conferences around the country, such as SXSW and the Billboard Music in Film and TV Conference. Glenn has been selected as a “Super Lawyer” by Super Lawyer Magazine for 2022-2026. Email Glenn at gtllaw59@gmail.com or check out his website at glennlitwak.comThe post THOMSON REUTERS WINS A.I. FAIR USE CASE first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.