A writ of certiorari is being sought from the Supreme Court in a case involving the copyrightability of standards and model codes. The case is entitled Southern Building Codes Congress Int'l, Inc. v. Peter Veeck d/b/a Regional Web, No. 02-355. It seeks to overturn a 5th Circuit decision nullifying copyright protection for certain model building codes.
Foley Hoag has filed an amicus brief in support of the Petitioner. A copy of the brief is available at the Foley Hoag website in pdf form: go to www.foleyhoag.com, then to newstand, then to publications. It is the second item on the publications list.
John L. Welch
Foley Hoag LLP
World Trade Center West
155 Seaport Boulevard
Boston, MA 02210-2600
Tel: 617/832-1258
Fax: 617/832-7000
e-mail: jwelch[_at_]foleyhoag.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Pietro Riolo [mailto:riolo[_at_]voicenet.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2003 10:35 PM
To: CNI-COPYRIGHT Mail List
Subject: [CNI-COPYRIGHT] Re: copyright on standards
On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Robert F. Bodi <lawlists[_at_]bodi.com> wrote:
>
You are quite correct in saying that the copyright rules apply. The problem with the organizations that produce standards is that they don't follow the rules properly. Very large portions of their standards are in the public domain because they are not copyrightable. Yet, they claim to own copyright in them and implicitly threaten anyone who attempts to copy the uncopyrightable portions without paying them any dime.
Take Unicode standard as an example. The organization also called Unicode, Inc. claims to own copyright in the standard. Yet, all the written alphabets in the standard are in the public domain. Moreover, the mapping of written alphabets to codes cannot be expressed in any other way and therefore subject to the Merger doctrine. The mapping also falls under the categories of system and method of operation that are explicitly excluded from copyright.
It is up to the original inquirer to decide whether to roll over, go with position of the organizations, and pay the cost for copying their standards; to evaluate the risk of being sued before deciding what to do next; or quietly ignore the copyright notice and copy the uncopyrightable portions of the standards without paying any penny.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>
http://www.boycottcopyright.com
Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 5,735
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.
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