A federal appeals court ruling outside the music business could have major implications for the music industry’s fight over AI training.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld Thomson Reuters’ copyright victory against Ross Intelligence, rejecting the company’s fair-use defense over its use of copyrighted Westlaw material to develop a competing AI legal-research product.
The Recording Industry Association of America and National Music Publishers’ Association had filed a joint brief in the case, arguing that using copyrighted works to train a system that produces a competing product should not automatically qualify as fair use.
The dispute is not a music case, and it does not decide the lawsuits currently involving record labels, publishers or AI music companies. But it gives copyright owners another appellate-level decision to cite as courts work through the boundaries of training-data use.
Amplifier Take: The important phrase is “not the final word.” AI copyright law is still being built case by case, but every appellate decision now has the potential to influence negotiations between music-rights owners and AI developers.