Lack of copyright hurts standards innovation --- crushes the industry.
Shu 19 – Startups and Technology Journalist at TechCrunch, M.A. in Journalism from the Columbia University School of Journalism.
Catherine Shu, “Can the law be copyrighted?,” TechCrunch, 04-09-2019, https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/can-the-law-be-copyrighted/
Scott and Garrett Reynolds say that lawsuits like the one they are facing may potentially deter other developers from working on tools to automate building and safety processes, such as calculating fire resistance in walls. The UpCodes suit, and the other cases that came before it, aren’t just relevant to builders. Technology has been able to streamline the process of regulatory and legal compliance in several industries, but innovation may slow if would-be founders are unclear about how copyright law applies to them.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation takes on clients like Public.Resource.org pro bono because “lawsuits can be a way of shutting down innovation in its infancy,” says McSherry. “It can be intimidating to people trying to experiment in this space.”