Thomson Reuters Claims Competitor's AI-Powered Bot Hijacked Westlaw Data
The case could demonstrate the sometimes adversarial coexistence of copyrights and artificial intelligence.
May 06, 2020 at 12:50 PM
3 minute read
(Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)
Thomson Reuters is accusing legal research competitor Ross Intelligence of using artificial intelligence to scrape proprietary data out of its Westlaw database.
With the help of bots and AI, it's never been easier to infringe massive amounts of copyrighted materials, and the lawsuit could underline the challenges of protecting copyrights as AI evolves.
Thomson Reuters claims Ross Intelligence worked with third-party LegalEase Solutions to copy Westlaw content en masse in order to "rush" development of a competing web-based legal product.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.
"It is clear that by copying the copyright-protected Westlaw content—piggybacking off of the creativity, countless hours, and extraordinary expense that have gone into creating Westlaw—Ross drastically sped up its development time and reduced the cost associated with the development of its competing platform," wrote Thomson Reuters' Kirkland & Ellis and Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell counsel.
San Francisco-based Ross Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for LegalEase, said that the legal support services company had settled litigation with West Publishing, the Thomson Reuters subsidiary that operates Westlaw, to the mutual satisfaction of both parties.
"We live by our core values of integrity, being customer-centric and transparency," the representative said in an email. "The claims made about LegalEase in the current lawsuit are inaccurate and misleading."
Thomson Reuters asserts that Ross began copying the information from LegalEase in July 2017, after Westlaw explicitly denied access to the competitor. "The net result is that plaintiffs are now being put in the unfair position of having to compete with a product that they unknowingly helped create," wrote the media conglomerate's lawyers, led by Kirkland's Dale Cendali.
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An investigation showed that, in 2017, LegalEase's Westlaw transactions jumped from 6,000 per month to 236,000 transactions per month and that the company was using software or a bot to systematically download and store Westlaw's West Key Number System, a proprietary hierarchy the company uses to organize its U.S. law content, according to the filing.
In addition to copyright infringement, Thomson Reuters is suing Ross for tortious interference with a contract. "Ross committed direct copyright infringement by reproducing and creating a derivative work based on plaintiffs' content, and is also secondarily liable for LegalEase's copyright infringement," the complaint contends.
The company is asking the court to order the removal and destruction of Westlaw content from its platform and require Ross to report on the profits, gains, advantages and value of business as a result of the alleged infringement.
David Crundwell, Thomson Reuter's senior vice president of corporate affairs, said the company had nothing to add to the complaint.
Read the complaint:
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