Copyright case: Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v. Ross Intelligence Inc., USA

Impact of first appellate court decision on AI and copyright fair use is limited because generative AI was not involved, and defendant’s use of headnotes for competing research product was not transformative.

A tech startup’s copying of Westlaw headnotes to use for training of a competing artificial-intelligence driven legal-research platform was not protected by the doctrine of fair use from copyright infringement claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has held. The appellate court affirmed a district court decision in favor of Westlaw operator Thomson Reuters on its copyright infringement claims against the startup. The court also determined that Westlaw headnotes have the requisite originality for copyright protection. “The undisputed evidence reflects that Thomson Reuters’s materials possess a creative spark, and ROSS aspired to be a direct competitor by using them for a highly similar purpose,” said the court. “We therefore hold that Thomson Reuters’s materials are copyrightable and that ROSS’s use was not fair.” The case has been closely watched as the first appellate determination on fair use in the AI context. However, the Third Circuit panel cautioned that this case was an “ordinary” copyright case with limited applicability to the many pending copyright cases involving generative AI technologies, which were not at issue here (Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v. Ross Intelligence Inc., No. 25-2153 (3d Cir. Sep. 29, 2026)).

Case date: 01 October 2026
Case number: No. 25-2153
Court: United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law