The Third Circuit finds that AI companies can’t use material with an original “creative spark.”

In October 2026, the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a lower court decision in the case *Thomson Reuters v.

ROSS Intelligence Inc.*, ruling that AI companies cannot use copyrighted material with original creative elements for training or commercial purposes.

The Third Circuit oversees Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands.

The case centered on ROSS Intelligence, an AI company that used legal research headnotes from Thomson Reuters' Westlaw platform to build a competing product.

The court found that even though headnotes are summaries of judicial opinions, their arrangement and curation by Westlaw contained enough originality to be protected by copyright law.

This decision reinforces that AI companies cannot claim fair use (a legal doctrine allowing limited use of copyrighted material without permission) when the material has a 'creative spark,' meaning it has been sufficiently transformed or organized to be considered original work.