Pamela Samuelson
Index Terms
- Copyrighting standards
Recommendations
ANSI's role in standards development
ANSI is the American National Standards Institute, the US national coordinating institute for voluntary standards. Typically, you will see ANSI in a standard's name followed by some letters and numbers such as X3.181-1980. These characters represent the ...
Standards Factor: GOOD NEWS FOR DRAFT SEEKERS
During the last two years, many Bulletin readers have asked me how they can obtain copies of the draft ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Committee) standards I've mentioned in this column. I've ...
The standards factor: standards on the horizon
This month's column focuses on the current status of various drafts of international standards, rather than on the progress of individual committees. There are two reasons for this shift in emphasis. First, in many cases, an International Organization ...
Reviews
Brad D. Reid
Are standards, especially those mandated by government, eligible for copyright protection__?__ No, states Samuelson after reviewing four federal court decisions. The US Supreme Court has not specifically addressed this issue. Banks v. Manchester holds that judicial opinions could not be copyrighted. Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service states that facts could not be protectable "discoveries" under the Copyright Act. Baker v. Seldon states that the explanation of a bookkeeping system could be copyrighted, but not the system or ledger sheets implementing it. The logic of these US Supreme Court decisions is applied by lower federal courts. Individuals associated with standards development should read this brief column. The American Medical Association (AMA) and American Dental Association (ADA) claim copyright for the code of standard terminology for medical and dental procedures. The federal Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) mandated the use of this code when filing claims for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement. Practice Management Information Corporation (PMIC) wanted to publish the code, and requested a declaratory judgment that the code was uncopyrightable because an exclusive license agreement between the AMA and HCFA forbade the agency from using "any other system of procedure nomenclature ... for reporting physicians' services." The federal ninth circuit found the exclusive licensing provision to be a misuse of the copyright. The federal seventh circuit reviewed a challenge to the ADA's code copyright and found that the codes were "original facts" that could be copyrighted. Southco sued Kanebridge for reproducing product names and numbers from its copyrighted catalog. Judge Alito, now on the US Supreme Court, wrote in a federal third circuit opinion that Southco had an unprotectable systematic compilation of information. In a federal tenth circuit decision, Mitel created four-digit command codes used in applications such as speed dialing that became an industry standard and were not subject to copyright protection. Samuelson concludes her discussion of why standards should not be copyrightable with the following observations. Standards "constrain the design choices of subsequent programmers ... thus becoming an unprotectable functional design." Furthermore, standards are created by volunteers, and thus should be a community resource. In addition, standards would be developed without financial incentives. Dissemination of standards is inexpensive and governments may be granted free use of the standards as an incentive to mandate their use. While I agree with Samuelson's analysis, we all await the final word from the US Supreme Court. Online Computing Reviews Service
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