SDOs don’t need copyright.
Samuelson 07 – Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, former Professor at Harvard University, J.D. from Yale University.
Pamela Samuelson, “Questioning Copyright in Standards,” University of California, Berkeley, https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/BC%20questioning%20standards.pdf
The principal argument in favor of copyright protection for industry standards is the claim SSOs make that they need copyright incentives to develop standards.153 The Supreme Court’s Feist decision, however, informs us that copyright protection is not available to information artifacts just because they are products of industrious efforts and their developers assert the need for copyright incentives. 154 Several considerations reinforce doubts about incentive-based arguments for copyright in standards.155
First, SSOs generally have ample incentives to develop standards for use by professionals in their fields. 156 It is simply not credible to claim that organizations like the AMA and ADA would stop developing standard nomenclature without copyright. The fields they serve need these standards for effective communication with other health care providers, insurers, and government agencies.