Ride the Lightning

ROSS Intelligence to Cease Operations But Continue the Legal Battle Against Thomson Reuters

December 14, 2020

On December 11, Bob Ambrogi reported on his LawSites blog that ROSS intelligence will cease operations. ROSS Intelligence, a company that sought to innovate legal research using artificial intelligence, has been crippled by a lawsuit against it by Thomson Reuters in its ability to raise new financing or explore potential acquisition. The suit left the company without sufficient funds to operate.

"We have made the difficult decision to shut down operations at ROSS Intelligence," the company said in a statement issued on December 11. "As of Monday of this week, we have no longer been accepting new customers. As of January 31, 2021, the ROSS platform will no longer be available. Between now and then, our priority is to help our current customers transition to other services."

The company vowed to continue its legal battle, using insurance funds to pay its litigation costs.

"The company will continue as a going concern so that the facts at the heart of this lawsuit are brought to light and so that Westlaw's tactics — using litigation as a weapon and stifling competition — do not succeed," the statement said.

Thomson Reuters sued ROSS in May, alleging that it purloined content from Westlaw to build its own competing legal research product. ROSS did this, TR alleged, by "intentionally and knowingly" inducing the legal research and writing company LegalEase Solutions to use its Westlaw account to deliver a large amount of Westlaw data to ROSS.

"ROSS did so, not for the purposes of legal research, but to rush out a competing product without having to spend the resources, creative energy, and time to create it itself," TR's complaint alleged.

The company strongly denied the allegation, asserting that TR's lawsuit was nothing more than an anticompetitive tactic by TR to squelch an up-and-coming competitor.

For its customers, ROSS has arranged for them to transfer their accounts to one of three other legal research platforms: Fastcase, vLex or Casetext. Customers will also be able to export their personal data, including all data from their saved folders.

Even as TR's lawsuit compels it to shut down, ROSS says it will continue to battle in court. The entire ROSS statement may be found in Bob's post.

On a personal note, I like ROSS CEO Andrew Arruda and everything he and his team set out to accomplish. For the moment, "Goliath" has won a major battle, but not yet the war.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
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Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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