Thomson Reuters v Ross Intelligence
A small newsletter about legaltech
AI
- Unsealed emails from Meta in the Authors Guild case against the company for copyright infringement in training its AI model with pirated copies of books revealed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen”
- A large UK law firm with offices in continental Europe and Asia has restricted staff access to GenAI-enhanced tools due to “significant increase in usage”
- The good, the bad and the ugly of AI agents
Two California bills introduced to regulate AI: - California State Senator Steve Padilla has introduced a bill that would mandate the developers of AI chatbots and minors to add guardrails to the use of these systems by minors, including recurring warnings that the chatbots are not people [Bloomberg News ($) | The Verge | Sen. Padilla press release | CA Bill Info] - Assemblymember Mia Bonta introduced a bill to prohibit GenAI systems used in connection with patient-facing healthcare from “the use of specified terms, letters, or phrases to falsely indicate or imply possession of a license or certificate to practice a health care profession” [Bonta’s press release | CA Bill Info]
- A compendium of legal ethics opinions on GenAI use compiled by OpenAI’s Deep Research (with prompting by Bob Ambrogi)
Court admonishments over GenAI errors - Ruffin et al. v. District of Columbia et al. [Law360 ($)] - Wadsworth v. Walmart [Order | Docket | Commentary: David Lat | LawFuel] | Law360 ($)] - Australia has joined Texas in banning DeepSeek on all government devices and systems, with rumors that the US Navy has a similar ban - What’s being seen as the first major ruling regarding AI training and fair use, a federal judge granted partial summary judgment to Thomson Reuters in its suit against Ross Intelligence, an AI legal start-up accused of downloading and using Westlaw content to train its pre-GenAI models, and denied Ross’ motion for summary judgment based on fair use [Docket | Order]
Among the plethora of analyses and reactions: - Summary from Matthew Sag - Story by Bob Ambrogi - [Very short] Bluesky post from Mark Lemley - Bloomberg Law ($) - Wired ($)
Blockchain/digital currency
- From CoinDesk: “Elon Musk Said to Propose Blockchain Use at D.O.G.E. for Efficiency: Bloomberg ($)“
- A quartet of senators have introduced bipartisan legislation to provide a regulatory framework for stablecoins [Congress.gov | One-page summary from Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) | Press release | Full text]
- The parents of former FTX founder/CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, are reportedly exploring how to request a pardon from the President for their son
- The Justice Dept. has indicted a Canadian man on charges of hacking decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols by exploiting vulnerabilities in automated smart contracts, defrauding investors out of an estimated $65 million
Miscellaneous
- How did I miss this? “Hackers for a way to remotely unlock, start and track millions of Subarus”
- A private equity firm in the UK has bought a few regional law firms
Long Reads
- Cohen, Michael K. et al., Regulating advanced artificial agents, Science, 384,36-38(2024). DOI:10.1126/science.adl0625
- Lee, Hao-Ping (Hank) et al., The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers. In CHI Conference and on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25), April 26–May 01, 2025, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, https://doi.org/10. [Summary from 404 Media ($)]
- U.S. Copyright Office, Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy (Feb. 12, 2025) https://www.copyright.gov/economic-research/economic-implications-of-ai/Identifying-the-Economic-Implications-of-Artificial-Intelligence-for-Copyright-Policy-FINAL.pdf