ARL joined an amicus brief led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urging the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to reverse the district court’s adverse fair-use ruling in Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH and West Publishing Corp. v. Ross Intelligence Inc. Upholding the decision in Thomson Reuters’s favor could jeopardize continued access to legal information in the public domain.
Thomson Reuters sued Ross Intelligence for copyright infringement when Ross copied legal summaries—“headnotes”—from Reuters’s Westlaw platform to train its own AI legal research tool. In February 2025, a district court judge ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters and West, finding that the headnotes were copyrightable and that Ross’s use did not qualify as fair use. The judge emphasized the fourth fair use factor—market harm—noting that Ross developed its tool specifically to compete with Westlaw.
Under the government edicts doctrine, judicial decisions are never copyrightable. The amicus brief argues that the headnotes are not copyrightable. The brief further argues that, even if court were to affirm the holding that the headnotes are copyrightable subject matter, the factual nature of the works should tilt the analysis towards fair use.
ARL advocates for laws and policies that preserve the government edicts doctrine, which libraries rely on to provide public access to official legal and other government documents.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit membership organization of research libraries and archives in major public and private universities, federal government agencies, and large public institutions in Canada and the US. ARL champions research libraries and archives, develops visionary leaders, and shapes policy for the equitable advancement of knowledge.
