Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence appeal ruling
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Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence appeal ruling — the Third Circuit held that ROSS training a competing legal research tool on Westlaw headnotes was not fair use, and upheld the district court's partial summary judgment. Case No. 25-2153, written by Judge Montgomery-Reeves
Why it matters
This is the first federal appellate ruling on fair use in AI training. Of the four factors, it found the purpose and character commercial and barely transformative, the amount used to be the headnotes copied in full, and the market effect harmful in two markets — the existing legal research market and the emerging market for licensing headnotes as AI training data. The court did, however, distinguish ROSS's tool from the generative models in Bartz and In re OpenAI on the ground that it cannot produce original expression, and it did not rule on whether generative AI training is fair use — cite it as generative AI precedent and you get it wrong. Whether some copyrights have expired, and the remaining headnote claims and damages, still go to trial in Delaware
Source — Primary sources first; secondary reports are labelled “Press”
Pressballardspahr.comhttps://www.ballardspahr.com/insights/alerts-and-articles/2026/10/third-circuit-addresses-fair-use-in-ai-training-but-leaves-generative-ai-questions-unresolvedAdded in Week 44, 2026 · See that week
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