While the Thomson Reuters copyright suit against Ross is just getting started, the Supreme Court recently put an end to a long-running copyright dispute between Google and Oracle. Before the case was argued in the fall, Cornell Law students Thomas Shannon, Andrew Kingsbury, and Tyler Schmitt did an excellent job previewing the case for our Bulletin subscribers here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/18-956

You can listen to the oral argument and read a brief summary of the decision over at the Oyez Project here: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/18-956

And, of course, we have the entire opinion on our site at: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/18-956

Will the Court’s latest pronouncement on fair use have any bearing on Westlaw’s claims against Ross? Only time will tell.

This is not an article about what is sure to be the most annoying part of the upcoming “Friends” reunion. It is, first and foremost, about ROSS AI.  

Back in October, I wrote about my experience using the legal research Chrome extension from ROSS AI. It was meant to be the first in a regular series of features about other Free Law tools available to you out in the world. And we’ll get back to that next time. Meanwhile, something has happened; and you need to hear about it.

ROSS went out of business. That’s the short version.

The longer version is that Thomson Reuters (TR), owners of Westlaw, had sued ROSS earlier in 2020. The complaint alleges, in short, that ROSS had obtained in bulk from a third party copyright-protected Westlaw content (such as headnotes, Key Numbers, and other organizational/editorial content added to the cases by Westlaw editors) and used that material in developing its AI-assisted platform.

Predictably, ROSS immediately issued a press release denying the allegations, stating that any copyright-eligible material from Westlaw it obtained through its third-party partner “would have been useless to ROSS.”       

The litigation proceeded apace. Briefing on a motion to dismiss was completed (but the motion not yet heard) by the time I wrote my review of the Chrome extension. (The court would subsequently deny the motion in an order dated March 29, 2021.)  

In December of 2020, ROSS announced that it would cease all operations by the end of January, 2021 and concentrate solely on fighting the TR lawsuit.  ROSS’s founder wrote, “With our company ensnared by this legal battle, we have been unable to raise another round of funding to fuel our development and marketing efforts.” 

Before we go any further, it’s important to say that I do not know whether or not the allegations in TRs complaint have merit or will be borne out by the evidence. Also, I understand just how common this is, and that many of the lawyers among our subscriber base have seen similar stories of young companies driven to extinction by the direct and indirect costs of defending themselves against allegations of intellectual property infringement or theft brought by very companies they are seeking to usurp. I’m also aware that some of us in the bar have worked for those large and well-resourced companies. And, at the risk of being redundant, I also understand that sometimes these allegations prove to be true and actionable.

In any event, ROSS subsequently filed an amended answer, including nine counterclaims attacking not only Westlaw’s claims of copyright, but also alleging antitrust violations. (Thomson Reuters has moved to dismiss the antitrust counterclaims.) In a concurrently-posted statement on its website, ROSS wrote:  

America is a country based on laws. The law belongs to all of us. It governs us, protects us, and forms the basis of our great democracy. Our highest ideal is justice for all. This depends on the people—all people—having access to the law. But for Westlaw, the public law is nothing but a commodity to be bought and purchased and a fiefdom to be protected at all costs. 

It’s quite a coincidence that the case I was researching when I first wrote about ROSS was the Supreme Court’s recent clarification of copyright law’s Government Edicts Doctrine, Georgia v. Public Resource.Org. Will that opinion have any impact on this case?  It could directly impact what the court ultimately determines to be the validity or the scope of the copyright TR claims.  

Beyond this particular litigation, the Georgia v. PRO case could indirectly impact the for-profit legal publishing industry by changing the perceived incentives for companies like TR to enter into contracts to be the original publishers of statutes, regulations, or case law.  

And Georgia v. PRO is not the Court’s most recent word on copyright. Earlier this month, it decided Google v. Oracle. In that case, the Court articulated what many believe to be an expanded understanding of the doctrine of Fair Use. Will ROSS be able to use that opinion to support the declaratory judgment it seeks that any alleged copying was fair use?  

There is much more to say about the intersection of the Government Edicts Doctrine, Fair Use, and publishing the law–whether for profit or not. As our team and others explore these topics, we’ll be sure to share the best parts with you.

At this point last year, we had no idea what was going to happen. No one did.  But we knew our donors had treated us generously (thanks again!), and we were on pace to record a surplus when our fiscal year wrapped up at the end of June. We also knew that the dual threat of economic uncertainty and remote work meant that many law students were seeing their summer job plans shrink dramatically or disappear altogether.  We decided to offer summer employment to any Cornell student who approached us, and to advertise that offer aggressively within the (virtual) halls of Cornell Law School. This would be a classic “win-win” scenario, where more students would find meaningful, law-related summer employment, while we (and you!) would get more new original content than we are usually capable of producing. It seemed like a classic opportunity to, as the old saying goes, take the lemons we’d been handed and make some lemonade.  

We began feverishly planning an ambitious student project to make use of the extra labor. We wanted to refurbish as many of the short definitions in our Wex legal reference as possible.  

It all (somehow) came together, and since this time last year we have seen dozens of students on the Wex Definition Team research and draft more than 1,000 improved Wex definitions.  

As the dust settled on a busy summer and the stream of new and improved Wex entries slowed to a trickle as classes started in September, we were tired and proud. We also had a couple of new problems. First, we’d seen the results that vigorous student employment could yield, and we were hungry for more. Second, all that time we’d just spent in Wex identifying definitions to be improved upon and publishing those improvements left us keenly aware of the untapped potential of that collection.

So did what any small team of professionals would do when faced with such a challenge: we asked for help! We were able to raise sufficient funds to hire our first ever Original Content Collections Manager. Just a few weeks ago, we were able to welcome Nichole McCarthy to our team!

Nichole views access to information as a form of advocacy when it prepares individuals and groups to make informed decisions. She has demonstrated her passion for information services through more than 7 years of human services advocacy experience – serving both non-profit agencies and the State of New York. Trained as a librarian, she has worked in public, academic, and specialized libraries and previously supported the Law Library of Congress as a Metadata Intern. She has also worked as a librarian at a law firm and as a volunteer archivist for  KRIA: The Icelandic Constitution Archives, where she archived over 1,000 webpages. In addition to her M.S. in Library and Information Science, Nichole has a B.A. in Women’s Studies and a M.S. in Criminal Justice Administration.

Nichole’s first task is to train and manage the sizable cohort of students who will make up the Wex Definitions Team this summer.  

Longer term, Nichole is tasked with a pair of huge challenges:  

1. To design and implement a better system of organization within Wex to help readers get to additional primary and secondary resources on our website and beyond that relate to the article they are viewing; and 
2. To create new kinds of original content, as well as a viable structure for recruiting, training, and managing larger networks of pre-law undergraduates, law students, and volunteer experts from around the country (around the globe?) to populate and maintain those collections

Nichole’s arrival and mission is just one of the brands of lemonade we are making out of the big bushel of lemons that the pandemic has handed us. We’ll keep you posted as we refine our recipe!  

In the midst of all the chaos this year, the United States Supreme Court did something remarkable.  We’ve already told you about Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org and its impact on opening up state-law materials; but, now is the perfect time to look a little more closely at what the Court said and why it was so good to hear.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts explained that “no one can own the law. ‘Every citizen is presumed to know the law,’ and ‘it needs no argument to show … that all should have free access’ to its contents.”  We’ve been beating that drum since 1992, and it’s wonderful to hear it echo at the Supreme Court.  We wouldn’t have arrived here without your generous support.

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But it’s something else the Chief Justice wrote that I want to focus on.  He invited readers to “imagine a Georgia citizen interested in learning his legal rights and duties.”   He notes that readers of the “economy-class version of the Georgia code available online” would come across laws that have been invalidated by courts.  “Meanwhile,” he noted, “first class readers with access to the annotations will be assured that these laws are, in crucial respects, unenforceable relics that the legislature has not bothered to narrow or repeal.”  

By posing that scenario, the Chief Justice was clear that the public deserves free access to complete and correct resources that fully enumerate and explain citizens’ rights and obligations.  And he assumes that citizens will go online to access them.  This is a HUGE shift from where we started out, when it seemed not just fashionable but downright “responsible” for judges, lawyers and academics to question the utility and reliability of free online legal resources available to the general public.  Only lawyers needed the law, the argument went, and trusting its dissemination exclusively to a duopoly of deep-pocketed publishers to keep it out of the hands of everyone else seemed more like a solution than a problem in that worldview.  

But even in those early days, we knew that all of you are “first class readers” who use the law to do your work, solve your problems, participate in society, and generally live your lives.  It has always been our top priority to bring you accurate, updated, and unbiased primary and secondary sources of legal information to help you do all that.  And, it turns out, the Supreme Court agrees that’s a very good idea.  

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Thank you for supporting us,

Craig Newton
Co-Director

Legal Information Institute

Dear friend,

The magic is working. Day in, day out, people continue to flock to the LII website for unfiltered primary sources on current events, for context on commonly-encountered legal situations, for school and for work. Most importantly, though, folks continue to use LII in ways that reach countless others. 

“I use this resource all the time as a journalist. Thank you!”

Despite difficult circumstances all around, those who are able to pitch in have continued to support us. And for today, Giving Tuesday, a generous group of donors has pledged to match every gift we receive. Twice.

Triple your impact today only

Because LII is an information service, for better or worse, we see a great deal of uncertainty and need behind our traffic. We are grateful that we continue to be able to serve the thousands of schools and nonprofits that refer traffic to us, and grateful that your (tripled!) gift will, in turn, help so many worthy causes leverage their own resources.

“Thank you so much for your continued work on this mission. I work for an under resourced agency and free access to your information truly makes a difference.”

“I am empowered by your website as I am in a Legal Nurse Consultant program and I use this website to help me better understand terms and definitions. Thank you.”

“I teach law. Most of my students go into solo or small firm practice. Having this resource is a life-saver for many of them because they cannot afford the various paid research services. But they still have clients who deserve justice.”

Arthur C. Clarke famously observed that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And because the application of ever-emerging technologies is central to fulfilling our mission, it’s easy to get caught up in the technology. But the real magic is in what the technology lets us do for real people, whether directly, or by empowering people and organizations to help others. Thank you for helping us work this magic.

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Thank you,

Sara Frug
Co-Director
Legal Information Institute

Another new feature we’re trying in our Newsletter is a Student Spotlight, where we showcase the work of the many students in law, computer science, and information science who work with us each year.   For this first installment, we’re focusing on probably our best-known work with students, the Supreme Court Bulletin Previews.

Many of our readers (approaching 20,000) subscribe to the Previews, where teams of Cornell Law Students write comprehensive, plain language, viewpoint neutral summaries of the legal and policy arguments the Court will consider for each case it hears.  In case you don’t subscribe, or in case you missed this particular Preview, we wanted to highlight the case of Carney v. Adams, which was the very first case the Court heard at the start of its current term.  

As our Preview notes, the case presented a First Amendment issue impacting judges and political parties in the state of Delaware.  As always, our students did an excellent job untangling and explaining a complex case.

If you haven’t already, please check it out.

And if you don’t already, please consider subscribing to this completely free service we offer.