The plot thickens in the ongoing copyright lawsuit by Thomson Reuters against ROSS Intelligence, as lawyers for TR have now subpoenaed documents from two companies not previously mentioned in the case, Fastcase, the legal research and publishing company, and Morae Global Corporation, a company that provides legal and compliance solutions to legal departments and law firms.
The subpoenas offer no explanation of how the companies may be related to the lawsuit, but request documents relating to any relationships between the companies and ROSS or LegalEase, the company that TR alleges ROSS engaged to help it steal content from Westlaw — an allegation the now-shuttered ROSS denies.
Lawyers for TR have not replied to my emails asking about the subpoenas. A Fastcase representative said the company had not received the subpoena and declined to comment.
The subpoena to Fastcase requests documents and communications relating to any “actual or potential” work it performed for ROSS and any other documents and communications concerning ROSS, “including providing the text of judicial opinions, statutes, and/or regulations to ROSS, the ROSS platform, training data, plaintiffs, Westlaw, Westlaw content, West headnotes, and/or WKNS (the West Key Number System)”
It also asks for any documents relating to communications between ROSS and Fastcase about TR’s prior lawsuit against LegalEase, which it settled shortly before filing the suit against ROSS, and for any communications between ROSS and Fastcase regarding the announcement by ROSS when it shut down that it would transfer customers to Fastcase.
The subpoena to Morae is similar in its requests, except that it focuses on any communications between Morae and LegalEase concerning ROSS. It suggests that LegalEase and Morae had entered into contracts related to ROSS, and asks Morae to produce documents concerning “the reason LegalEase entered into one or more contracts with you concerning ROSS.”
Here is the full text of each subpoena:
