Canadian legal information database sues company behind AI chatbot

The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) has filed a lawsuit against the creators of an AI chatbot, alleging that it violated CanLII’s terms of service by scraping its database in bulk.

Established in 2001 and funded by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, CanLII offers access to a range of legal resources, including case decisions, legislation, law books, and commentary.

In its lawsuit, filed in B.C. Supreme Court on Monday, CanLII accuses Caseway AI of infringing on its copyrighted material by “the bulk and systematic download and scraping” of approximately 3.5 million records.

Caseway, a chatbot launched earlier this fall, aims to “improve access to justice for non-lawyers and make legal practice more efficient by providing advanced legal research tools,” according to its creators.

This legal action is part of a broader trend where organizations and artists are challenging AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which provide information in a question-and-answer format, for allegedly violating copyrights by downloading content in bulk.

CanLII argues that it enhances the publicly accessible court records to make them more user-friendly, such as by adding hyperlinks and correcting errors. It claims that this work constitutes protected copyrighted content and that Caseway ignored a cease-and-desist letter sent last month, which addressed the bulk downloading in violation of CanLII’s terms of use.

“The Defendants’ breach of the Terms of Use was undertaken by the Defendants so that the Defendants, and each of them, could profit from the CanLII Works, which have been developed at significant cost and expense to CanLII,” the lawsuit states.

CanLII is seeking an injunction to prevent Caseway from using any of the material it scraped. The organization is also pursuing punitive damages for the "loss, damage, expense, and irreparable harm" it claims to have suffered due to the bulk downloading. None of the claims have been proven in court.

Caseway has not yet filed a formal response to the lawsuit, but the company provided a statement to CBC News when contacted.

The company maintains that its mission to enhance access to legal information aligns with CanLII's own goals. "We would welcome a collaboration with CanLII, and are surprised that, as a not-for-profit organization, CanLII has instead opted to take such an aggressive and competitive posture toward Caseway," said a spokesperson for the company.

The spokesperson further argued that the information CanLII provides is public and available elsewhere, and that Caseway did not use any of the enhancements CanLII has made to its database. They also stated that CanLII has not suffered any damages from the bulk downloading, as its functionality remains intact.

"In short, CanLII's services continue as before, with no demonstrable harm or financial detriment resulting from Caseway's independent data sourcing methods," the statement reads.

The spokesperson also compared the situation to other high-profile legal disputes, saying, “People like Elon Musk often get sued because they are change agents. I see myself as a change agent in the legal industry, which is naturally litigious."