Ross Seeks More Time to Request Full-Court Review in AI Copyright Case

ENGLISH · AI & COPYRIGHT

Photo: Nick Morrison / Unsplash

Ross Intelligence has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to extend its deadline to seek rehearing en banc in its copyright dispute with Thomson Reuters. A filing disclosed last week seeks to move the deadline from October 13 to November 3; as of the latest report, the court had not said whether it would grant the request.

What the panel decided

On September 30, a Third Circuit panel affirmed the ruling that Westlaw headnotes can qualify for copyright protection and rejected Ross’s fair-use defense over its use of the headnotes to develop a competing AI legal-research product. The opinion examined the specific material and commercial purpose at issue. It does not decide every question about training AI systems on copyrighted works.

A full-court rehearing request, if filed, would ask all active judges on the circuit to revisit the panel decision. The extension request itself is procedural and does not change the judgment. The dispute remains a closely watched test of how copyright doctrine applies when protected editorial content is used to build a substitute research tool.

For AI developers and publishers, the case highlights the value of documenting data sources, permissions, and the role of human-created editorial material in training and product design.

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Sources: MediaPost · Third Circuit opinion