Now it’s Fastcase’s turn.
Law Sites reports
Ambrogi
Legal research technology company Fastcase, which is now owned by Clio, has filed a federal lawsuit against AI-powered legal research platform Alexi, alleging breach of contract, trademark infringement and trade secret misappropriation, relating to its use of data licensed from Fastcase.
The complaint, filed Nov. 26 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses the Canadian company of transforming a limited data license into a competing commercial product.
Although Alexi has not yet formally responded to the lawsuit, its founder and CEO Mark Doble told me yesterday afternoon that he denies any wrongdoing and that he believes the lawsuit is based on a misunderstanding of the original licensing agreement that came to light during Clio’s recent closing of its purchase of vLex, which had merged with Fastcase in 2023.
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According to the complaint, Fastcase and Alexi (formerly known as Alexsei) entered into a data license agreement in December 2021. At that time, the complaint says, Alexi operated as what it described as a “research institution,” employing staff attorneys who used AI-assisted passage-retrieval technology to prepare legal research memoranda for clients within 24 hours.
The agreement, the complaint alleges, granted Alexi access to Fastcase’s proprietary legal database solely for “internal research purposes” — specifically, research conducted by Alexi’s own lawyers in preparing client memoranda. The license explicitly prohibited using the data for commercial purposes, competitive purposes or publishing or distributing the data in any form, Fastcase alleges.
(Although Fastcase filed a copy of the licensing agreement with the court, it did so under seal, so it cannot be viewed by the public.)
Fastcase, founded in 1999, merged with vLex in 2023 and was subsequently acquired by Clio for $1 billion in a transaction that closed Nov. 10 — described in the complaint as “one of the most significant transactions in legal technology history.”
At Issue Is Fastcase Data
The lawsuit centers on Fastcase’s claim that Alexi fundamentally changed its business model while continuing to rely on Fastcase’s data under the original restricted license.
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