A federal judge in Delaware has dismissed the claim by now-shuttered legal research startup ROSS Intelligence that Thomson Reuters (TR) violated federal antitrust law. ROSS alleged that TR unlawfully tied its search tool to its public law database to maintain dominance in the market for legal search platforms, but the claim has been rejected.
The decision concludes ROSS’s counterclaims in the ongoing litigation between ROSS and TR, but TR’s copyright infringement claims against ROSS are still pending. TR alleges that ROSS unlawfully copied its legal materials to train its AI-driven legal research platform. The trial for these claims has been continued and is yet to be decided.
TR initiated the copyright lawsuit in May 2020, prompting ROSS to file a counterclaim accusing TR of antitrust violations by monopolizing the legal research market. Judge Leonard P. Stark had previously dismissed part of ROSS’s antitrust claims but allowed the tying claim to proceed. However, Judge Stephanos Bibas, who replaced Judge Stark, has now granted TR’s motion for summary judgment on the tying claim. According to the opinion issued Friday, ROSS failed to provide sufficient evidence to support its allegations.
Judge Bibas ruled that ROSS’s claim rested on insufficient proof that TR’s caselaw database and search tools were separate products. ROSS had to establish that there is consumer demand to purchase these products separately but failed to do so. Judge Bibas pointed out that legal databases, whether in book form or digital, have always included search tools, such as tables of contents and indices.
Additionally, the judge found that ROSS’s expert witness, James Ratliff, failed to properly define the relevant market affected by the alleged tying arrangement. Ratliff’s opinion lacked methodological rigor and sufficient detail, making it inadmissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and the Daubert standard (Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 592–93 (1993)).