In today’s digital environment, the issues of content use and intellectual property rights are becoming increasingly important. With the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, legal conflicts between large companies and new market players are becoming more and more common. Confrontations over copyright and unauthorized use of data are not only the subject of litigation, but also determine the future of business and technology interaction. This case is another example of how legal mechanisms regulate the latest challenges of the digital age.
Details of the case
Judge Stefanos Bibas of the U.S. District Court in Delaware ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters in a copyright infringement case against Ross Intelligence that began in 2020. This case is one of the first cases to address the legality of artificial intelligence tools and methods of obtaining training data used by developers.
Thomson Reuters filed a lawsuit over Ross Intelligence’s use of the Westlaw search engine. In turn, Westlaw indexes many materials that are not protected by copyright (for example, court decisions), but also adds its own content (for example, brief comments from editors).
The court considering the issue of copyright infringement concluded in a so-called summary judgment that Ross did 
infringe the copyright in 2,234 titles, and that the use of the content did not fall under the fair use doctrine.
Ross Intelligence defended its right to copy this content in court, citing the rules of fair use. Judge Bibas wrote in his ruling that none of the company’s possible defense arguments stood up to scrutiny, as the company had effectively made a direct competitor to Westlaw by using this content.
“We are pleased that the court granted summary judgment in our favor and concluded that Westlaw’s editorial content, created and maintained by our trusted editors, is copyrighted and cannot be used without our consent. Copying our content was not ‘fair use,” Thomson Reuters spokesman Jeff McCoy told The Verge.
Although the case is still ongoing, this decision is one of the first court rulings on copyright and AI training that will obviously have serious consequences for the industry. For instance, AI developers will have to revise their training datasets, obtain licenses from copyright holders, or exclude protected works.
Law enforcement practice regarding authorship and originality of works created by AI
One interesting case concerns the author of the comic book Zarya of the Dawn, who used illustrations created by Midjourney AI in her comic book. As a result, the US Copyright Office refused to grant a copyright certificate for these images to the comic book author, emphasizing that copyright protects only creative contributions created by humans. Therefore, the illustrations generated by AI are not protected by copyright, while the text of the comic and the creative design of the book are subject to copyright. In some cases, copyright protection can be granted to content if it can be proven that the author (human) has made a significant contribution to the creation of the relevant content.
The case of Steven Thaler complements the position of the Copyright Office on the previous case of “Zarya of the Dawn”. At the center of Thaler’s case is the painting “Recent Entry into the Garden of Eden” created in 2012 by DABUS AI developed by Steven Thaler, the founder of Imagination Engines Incorporated. Thaler filed an application for registration of the painting with the US Copyright Office, indicating DABUS as the author of the work. The 
Bureau rejected the application, stating that “the work does not have sufficient human authorship to qualify for copyright protection”. In his lawsuit against the Bureau, Steven Thaler referred to the position of the US Supreme Court, which ruled that “technological changes should be taken into account when interpreting the Copyright Act,” which, according to the plaintiff, is the rapid development of AI.
These cases once again prove that the development of technology is inevitably accompanied by legal challenges, and the issue of intellectual property protection remains relevant even in the age of AI. These cases will emphasize the importance of compliance with legal norms and remind us that even the most advanced technologies must operate within the law. This decision could set a precedent for further copyright disputes and affect how companies interact with data in the future.
artificial intelligence / copyright / intellectual property / Thomson Reuters
