Overview of Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence and ongoing mRNA patent litigation
Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v. ROSS Intelligence Inc. (United States District Court for the District of Delaware)
“None of Ross’s possible defenses holds water. I reject them all” – Judge Bibas
The dust settles in the first legal battle of the ongoing war over Artificial Intelligence (AI) copyright. The media giant Thomson Reuters, the owner of Westlaw, emerged victorious.
ROSS purchased from a third party a database of “legal questions” derived from and substantially similar to Westlaw headnotes, and used this database of questions to train its AI search engine. The search engine tool being developed would have been a direct competitor to Westlaw.
The United States District Court for the District of Delaware reversed its earlier decision in 2023, holding that ROSS’ use of headnotes did not constitute fair use. The judgement grounds its decision largely on the first and fourth fair use factors. Regarding the first fair use factor—the purpose and character of the use—the court found the use of headnotes to be commercial in nature, and the resulting search engine would have a similar purpose as Westlaw. However, the fourth factor—value and market—was ultimately the deciding factor. The District Court held that the search engine developed by ROSS would serve as a market substitute for Westlaw and take away Westlaw’s market share, decreasing Westlaw’s value.
Practically, the case law has little consequence, as ROSS announced its shutdown in 2021, when Thomson Reuters launched its lawsuit. Nevertheless, this is a victory for the “media” side in the ongoing war over training data. It remains unclear what this case means for AI training data. The AI search engine developed by ROSS was a far cry from modern Large Language Models (LLMs). I leave you with this gem of an introduction from the judgement.
“A smart man knows when he is right; a wise man knows when he is wrong. Wisdom does not always find me, so I try to embrace it when it does––even if it comes late, as it did here” stated Judge Bibas, Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence.
mRNA Kerfuffle
The legal battle over mRNA patents continues. On March 5, the Düsseldorf Regional Court ruled that Pfizer and BioNTech violated the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine patent EP 3590 949. Pfizer claimed it had been authorized to use the patent during the pandemic until May 2023, when the WHO declared the pandemic to be over. Presiding judge Daniel Voß was unconvinced and found that a press release in March 2022 had revoked the use. The parties may appeal to the Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf.
EP 949 and another patent are at the heart of the ongoing legal battle, both of which are highly contentious. In late 2023, Moderna lost the Dutch version of this case at the Hague District Court when the court declared the Dutch part of EP 949 invalid due to lack of novelty. The Court of Appeal in the Netherlands will likely review this decision sometime this summer. In July 2022, the UK high court found Pfizer and BioNTech to infringe Moderna’s EP 949. The UK Court of Appeal will likely hear it next year. The same patent did not survive opposition in the US (US20120237975), Canada (CA2821992), and Australia (AU2011308496). BioNTech’s stance continues to be that EP 949 is invalid.
Within the same day, March 5, the United States Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) found the U.S. Patent Nos. 10,702,600 and 10,933,127 patents unpatentable as obvious. This result put an end to Moderna’s August 2022 lawsuit against Pfizer and BioNTech, alleging infringement of the two now invalid patents. That is, until Moderna appealed the PTAB’s decision to the Federal Circuit.
Moderna’s August 2022 lawsuit included the infringement of a third patent (No. 10,898,574), which remains in the District of Massachusetts. The result of that part of the case remains to be seen. The end of this legal battle is nowhere in sight.
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