Federal Court Rules Against 'Fair Use' Defense For AI Training

On Tuesday, February 11, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware held in Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH et al. v. ROSS Intelligence Inc. that the defendant's unauthorized use of the plaintiff's copyrighted materials to train its legal research AI tool was not fair use. This ruling is the first reported case to address whether the use of copyrighted training data for AI training constitutes fair use. Notably, as set forth in Judge Stephanos Bibas' "Caveat,"¹ this ruling pertains solely to fair use in the context of training non-generative AI. Whether training generative AI tools on copyrighted materials constitutes fair use remains to be addressed in myriad pending lawsuits.² Bibas' decision reflects the importance courts have historically placed on the fair use prong that evaluates the effect the defendant's conduct would have on the marketplace for the applicable copyrighted materials. As such, the decision may inevitably be cited both