ROSS Appeals Westlaw Headnote Ruling, Putting AI Training Fair Use Before the Third Circuit

The appeal asks the court to clarify whether Westlaw headnotes are protected works, with implications for fair use in AI training.

Overview

ROSS Intelligence filed its opening brief in the Third Circuit in September 2025, challenging a district court ruling that found infringement.
Judge Stephanos Bibas granted summary judgment for Thomson Reuters in February 2025, holding that Westlaw headnotes are copyrightable and that ROSS’s training use was not fair use.
The district court certified the case for interlocutory appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), citing novel, controlling questions of law.
ROSS frames two issues on appeal: whether short quotes or paraphrases of judicial holdings are copyrightable and whether fair use protects internal training when outputs do not reproduce the material.
Court filings describe ROSS commissioning 25,000 memoranda from LegalEase Solutions using headnote-derived questions as labeled examples that were not shown to users, a practice cited as central to the dispute.