Gabriel M. Ramsey

Gabriel M. Ramsey is a Crowell & Moring LLP partner in the intellectual property, privacy & cybersecurity and litigation groups. He moved to the firm in 2017 from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where he served as co-leader of its cybersecurity and data privacy group.

An early job working for a video game company sparked his attraction to the field. “It got me interested in the technology behind the games and how you copyright the content,” he said.

Ramsey’s clients have included Microsoft Corp., McAfee, Inc., EMC Corp., Perfect World Entertainment, Namco Bandai Games, CNET Networks, eHarmony.com, Audible Magic Corp., Fox Entertainment Group, Fox Broadcasting, Universal Studios, and The Walt Disney Company.

He described a current copyright infringement case as a David v. Goliath legal battle between his client—a startup AI innovator called ROSS Intelligence Inc.—and the legal research giant that produces the Westlaw database. The Westlaw parent sued ROSS for copyright infringement and tortious interference with their content. Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH et al. v. ROSS Intelligence Inc., 1:20-cv-00613 (D. Del., filed May 6, 2020).

The complaint accuses ROSS of using a then-Westlaw licensee to access and copy Westlaw material to create a competing product.

A key issue in dispute is whether Westlaw content is original and creative, factors that make it eligible for copyright protections. Novel questions include whether the “structure, sequence and organization” of the West key number system is protectable and whether headnotes in cases published by Westlaw are protectable.

“This case is really important because at its core it is about who gets to control the words of the court,” Ramsey said. “We expect to show that the material at issue is in the public domain and not copyrightable, or is available under the fair use doctrine.”

In an opinion rejecting Ramsey’s motion to dismiss, then-U.S. District Judge Leonard P. Stark of Wilmington, Del., wrote, “These are important and interesting questions that will, almost certainly, be confronted at some stage of this case” but don’t warrant early dismissal.

In January 2021, Ramsey filed antitrust counterclaims based on alleged misuse of copyrights and other unfair business actions by Thomson Reuters and West Publishing. The claims are intended to put an end to the Thomson Reuters monopoly on the $8 billion legal research market, Ramsey said. Thomson Reuters’ motion to dismiss those claims has been briefed and is pending.

In an earlier case, Ramsey successfully took down one of the largest spam botnets, known as Necurs, using a novel theory of trademark infringement and employing numerous foreign partners to gain control of more than six million of the botnet’s internet addresses. Microsoft Corp. v. Does 1-2, 1:20-cv-01217 (E.D. N.Y., filed March 5, 2020).

“With a lot of teamwork, we were able to disable a huge amount of infrastructure used by this botnet,” Ramsey said.

– John Roemer