Juelsgaard Clinic Urges Court to Shield Innovation in Authorized Search – Mills Authorized Clinic of Stanford Law College

In May 2020—over two years earlier than OpenAI launched ChatGPT—the media and know-how conglomerate Thomson Reuters sued ROSS Intelligence, a small synthetic intelligence (AI) startup, alleging copyright infringement. ROSS was growing an AI-driven authorized analysis platform, one that might compete with Thomson Reuters’ personal authorized analysis platform, Westlaw. ROSS skilled its AI mannequin utilizing memos that had been written by a third-party firm. These memos included Westlaw’s copyrighted headnotes (concise statements of specific factors of legislation in a judicial opinion). But a ROSS person would by no means see these headnotes, as its search engine’s output contained solely the textual content of a judicial opinion.

In 2021, ROSS, ensnared in an costly authorized battle, shut down operations. Of course, copyright infringement is critical and startups do not need a proper to infringe others’ copyrights. But was this really copyright infringement? Or was it an overbroad, doubtful assertion of copyright used to sit back innovation, elevate boundaries to entry, restrict competitors in legal-information markets, and cut back public entry to the legislation and to justice?

August Gebhard-Koenigstein (’26), a complicated pupil within the SLS Juelsgaard Intellectual Property & Innovation Clinic (JIPIC), working with Clinic Director Phil Malone and Supervising Attorney Nina Srejovic, just lately filed an amicus transient with the Third Circuit urging the court docket to search out that it was the latter. The transient, submitted on behalf of six non-profit and industrial authorized analysis know-how platforms, asks the Third Circuit to reverse a Delaware district court docket’s 2025 summary judgment ruling in favor of Thomson Reuters’ claims. Specifically, the transient argues that (1) headnotes usually are not copyrightable and (2) even when they had been, ROSS’s use of headnotes to coach its AI mannequin was honest use.

Copyright protects authentic works of authorship. Individual headnotes are by definition virtually fully unauthentic—every headnote exists to faithfully, concisely, and precisely describe a singular level of legislation from a judicial opinion. It is subsequently no shock that many headnotes are merely copied verbatim from the judicial opinions they describe. Others, those who paraphrase some extent of legislation reasonably than copy it, are easy (and infrequently close to verbatim) restatements of truth about an opinion’s content material.

Consider the basic copyright case, Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. When discussing copyright’s originality requirement, Justice O’Connor quoted a legislation evaluation article for the proposition that “the originality requirement is constitutionally mandated for all works.” Imagine you had been the legal professional at Westlaw tasked with summarizing this level of legislation in a headnote. Would there be room so that you can train creativity? Or would doing so danger you failing to perform the headnote’s goal of precisely describing a particular level of legislation? Here is what certainly one of Westlaw’s attorneys got here up with: “Originality, for copyright purposes, is constitutionally mandated for all works.” Westlaw, to supply an expert, practical product, is severely constrained in its creativity. Headnotes artistic sufficient to fulfill copyright’s originality requirement would fail to do what they’re meant to do.

But even when headnotes had been copyrightable, ROSS’s use was protected by the doctrine of honest use. Thanks to honest use, comedians can parody hit songs, YouTubers can evaluation new episodes of Severance utilizing quick clips from the present, and legislation clinic college students can embrace a Westlaw headnote of their weblog publish a few case involving copyright infringement of headnotes, all with out permission from the respective copyright homeowners. As the Supreme Court mentioned in Stewart v. Abend, courts apply the honest use doctrine to “avoid rigid application of the copyright statute when, on occasion, it would stifle the very creativity which that law is designed to foster.”

ROSS’s use of Westlaw’s headnotes at an intermediate stage to coach its mannequin is such an event. ROSS’s use was transformative—ROSS used the headnotes as an enter and actually remodeled that enter into one thing solely completely different – higher search functionality – that didn’t incorporate any of the copyrighted materials. Moreover, ROSS is entitled larger leeway in its declare of honest use as a result of, on a spectrum from most to least artistic, headnotes land on the latter facet. And lastly, ROSS’s use serves a distinct goal (coaching an AI instrument that indexes related instances in responses to person search queries) than Westlaw’s headnotes (summarizing a particular level of legislation) and thus will not be a market substitute for them.

There are additionally clear coverage causes favoring a discovering of honest use right here. Free Law Project, one of many transient’s amici, runs the free on-line authorized database and analysis platform, CourtListener.com, amongst different initiatives to make entry to legislation extra equitable and reasonably priced. It succinctly described these coverage concerns in its own blog post concerning the amicus transient:  “Overbroad copyright claims hurt the public. If copyright is stretched this far, it will block new companies, nonprofit organizations, and innovators from building better tools to access the law. That would make legal information more expensive and less available, especially to people who need it most.”

This lawsuit differs in some vital methods from different AI coaching copyright lawsuits. For instance, in contrast to ChatGPT or Claude, ROSS’s AI instrument was not “generative” (it didn’t write new content material itself). But most of the elementary questions are the identical. And Thomson Reuters v. ROSS represents the primary time a US Circuit Court could have the chance to instantly weigh in on whether or not coaching an AI mannequin on copyrighted materials constitutes honest use. JIPIC’s amicus transient underscores the necessity for the Third Circuit to make sure that copyright doesn’t exceed its reputable scope and thereby impermissibly restrain competitors, restrict innovation, and hurt customers.

Image by Phil Malone

You can learn the Clinic’s amicus transient right here.