A recent ruling in a copyright infringement case against AI firm Ross Intelligence could have significant implications for the growing number of lawsuits against AI companies, but experts warn it's not a slam dunk for plaintiffs. A US federal judge handed down a summary judgment in favor of Thomson Reuters, finding that Ross Intelligence's use of Reuters' content to train its AI legal research platform infringed on Reuters' intellectual property.

The case revolves around Ross Intelligence's use of headnotes – summaries of legal decisions – from Westlaw, Reuters' legal research service, to train its AI. Ross argued that its use of copyrighted headnotes was legally defensible because it was transformative, meaning it repurposed the headnotes to serve a markedly different function or market. However, Judge Stephanos Bibas didn't find that argument convincing, ruling that Ross was repackaging Westlaw headnotes in a way that directly replicated Westlaw's legal research service.

Bibas also cited Ross' commercial motivations as a reason the startup's defense missed the mark. Ross sought to profit from a product that competed directly with Westlaw, and without significant "recontextualization" of the IP-protected Westlaw material. According to Syracuse University professor Shubha Ghosh, who studies IP law, the ruling is a "strong victory" for Thomson Reuters.

The implications of this ruling could be far-reaching, with over 39 copyright-related AI lawsuits currently working their way through US courthouses. Already, at least one set of plaintiffs in another AI copyright case have asked a court to consider Bibas' decision. However, experts caution that the precedent may not sway other judges, and the ruling is relatively narrow in its application.

Bibas' opinion made a distinction between "generative AI" and the AI used by Ross, which didn't generate content but merely spit back judicial opinions that were already written. Generative AI, which is at the center of copyright lawsuits against companies such as OpenAI and Midjourney, is frequently trained on massive amounts of content from public sources around the web. Most companies developing generative AI argue that fair use doctrines shield their practice of scraping data and using it for training without compensating – or even crediting – the data's owners.

However, not every copyright holder agrees, pointing to the phenomenon known as regurgitation, where generative AI creates content closely resembling the work it was trained on. Randy McCarthy, a US patent attorney, believes Bibas' focus on the "impacts upon the market for the original work" could be key to rights holders' cases against generative AI developers. But he also cautioned that Bibas' opinion is relatively narrow and that it may be overturned on appeal.

Another attorney, Mark Lezama, thinks Bibas' opinion could have wider implications, potentially extending to generative AI in its various forms. He argues that the court's reasoning could be applied to cases involving generative AI, where news sites or publishers argue that copying their articles for training a generative AI is no different because the generative AI uses the copyrighted articles to compete with the news site for user attention.

In conclusion, while the ruling is a significant development in the ongoing battle between AI companies and copyright holders, it's not a clear-cut victory for plaintiffs. The implications of this case will continue to unfold as the trial proceeds, and experts will be watching closely to see how the ruling affects the broader landscape of AI copyright infringement cases.