TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Azya Thornton on Feb 12, 2025

A federal judge in Delaware has ruled that Ross Intelligence violated copyright law when it copied content from Thomson Reuters to build a competing artificial intelligence-based legal platform. According to Reuters, U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas' decision against the now defunct legal-research firm marks the first U.S. ruling on the closely watched question of fair use in AI-related copyright litigation. The "fair use" argument has become a key defense for tech companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms, fighting lawsuits brought by authors, record labels, visual artists and others over the use of their material to train AI systems. Tech companies argue that generative AI systems make fair use of copyrighted material by studying it to learn to create new content, while copyright owners say the companies use their work to generate competing content that threatens their livelihoods.