Appeals court rejects Ross's fair-use defense in training case
Third Circuit affirmed summary judgment against ROSS on September 29, 2026 — the first federal appellate ruling on AI-training fair use
Here's the headline risk for you: 248 lawsuits sounds like chaos, but only one of them just changed the law. The Third Circuit didn't rule on generative AI at all — it ruled on a competitor building a search tool from Thomson Reuters' content before generative AI was even widespread. That's a narrow door, but plaintiffs everywhere just got a citation they didn't have last month, and the court sitting on the largest pile of these cases, Northern California, will be reading it closely.
Why it matters to you: The first appellate ruling against an AI company's fair-use defense — even a narrow one — hands every plaintiff in the other 247 cases a new citation to try.
This story ran in the Coral Wire edition of Tue, Oct 13 2026, when the Coral Index stood at 26/100 (Storm warning).
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