US appeals court upholds Thomson Reuters win over Ross Intelligence, rejecting fair use for AI training
copyright training
| Source: Techmeme | Original article
A U.S. appeals court upheld a ruling for Thomson Reuters, rejecting Ross Intelligence's fair‑use defense in its copyright suit over AI training.
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday affirmed a lower‑court decision that favored Thomson Reuters in its copyright suit against legal‑tech startup Ross Intelligence. The panel rejected Ross’s claim that its use of Thomson Reuters’ content to train an artificial‑intelligence system qualified as “fair use,” leaving the original ruling intact.
The judgment marks a rare appellate win for a traditional information provider in the fast‑growing dispute over how copyrighted material may be harvested for AI models. By denying the fair‑use defense, the court signals that repurposing large bodies of proprietary text for machine‑learning purposes may not be shielded by existing doctrine, at least where the plaintiff can demonstrate that the use is not transformative enough to outweigh the copyright holder’s interests.
Legal analysts see the outcome as a potential bellwether for other publishers and data owners who have sued AI developers for similar practices. If upheld through further appeals, the precedent could compel AI firms to secure licenses or redesign data‑crawling pipelines, reshaping the economics of model training and possibly slowing the rollout of new AI services that rely on extensive textual corpora.
The next steps will likely involve Ross Intelligence’s options for a further appeal, possibly to the Supreme Court, and a watchful eye on how other content creators respond—whether through litigation, settlement negotiations, or lobbying for clearer legislative guidance. The case underscores the growing tension between the AI industry’s data hunger and the legal frameworks that protect copyrighted works.
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