Issue No. 061 · Story 03 · October 2, 2026

Third Circuit Rejects ROSS Copyright Fair Use Defense

The Third Circuit affirmed partial summary judgment for Thomson Reuters in its copyright case against ROSS Intelligence. The court held that 2,243 Westlaw headnotes were sufficiently original for protection and that ROSS's use of them to train a competing legal search system was not fair use.

§ROSS used training memoranda derived from Westlaw headnotes to help its system identify judicial passages responsive to legal questions.
§The court emphasized the competing platforms' similar purposes and the effect on the value of Westlaw's legal research service.
§ROSS's system returned existing judicial text rather than generating new expression. The opinion addresses that record, not every use of copyrighted material in generative AI.

THE TAKEAWAY

The opinion distinguishes public judicial opinions from a publisher's protected editorial material. Its fair use analysis turns on the particular training use and competition between the two legal research platforms.

Source: Courthouse News

Same issue

Bill Withers' Publisher Sues Over Olivia Dean Song

Mattie Music Group, the publisher of Bill Withers' catalog, filed a federal copyright lawsuit over Olivia Dean's I've Seen It. The complaint alleges that the song copies protected melody from Just the Two of Us and names Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony, and Kobalt entities as defendants. Dean and her co-writers are not defendants.

Quince Wins Dismissal of Williams-Sonoma Advertising Claims

A California federal judge dismissed Williams-Sonoma's false advertising and related claims against Quince without prejudice. The September 30 order found that the retailer had not plausibly alleged actionable false or misleading comparisons. Williams-Sonoma may file an amended complaint by October 21.

Trademark