Several copyright rulings on what constitutes fair use have been issued so far in 2025, including Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH et al. v. Ross Intelligence Inc. This case involved allegations that Ross Intelligence Inc. infringed material from Thomson Reuters' Westlaw platform to create a competing AI-powered legal research tool. The Third Circuit has granted Ross an interlocutory appeal, taking up two questions: whether the Westlaw material that Ross used to train its legal research tool is sufficiently original to copyrightable, and whether its use was fair.
Finnegan partner Anna Chauvet commented on the appeal.
“Even if the Third Circuit finds that the Westlaw headnotes are copyrightable, it may still find the scope of protection to be ‘thin’," as “[t]here are only so many ways to explain a legal doctrine accurately,” she said. “If so, other works — including Ross's 'Bulk Memos' — can resemble the original closely without infringing if they do not copy the precise expressive elements.”
Read “The Biggest Copyright Rulings Of 2025: A Midyear Report”
