Who Owns the Law? EFF and Public Resource in Intellectual Property Copyright Battle Over Privately Developed Standards Incorporated In Laws

Mitch Stoltz at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in No One Owns The Law. Everyone Owns The Law reports on the rather strange case of copyright suits by private standards development organizations (SDOs) against Public.Resource.Org for publishing privately developed standards that have been incorporated into laws.

Who owns the law? It is of course quite clear that Public.Resource.Org must emerge victorious and that the intellectual property trolls, no matter what their private standing in terms of standards development, must lose. Laws ultimately made belong to the people, ALL the people.

We might add that if actual copyright issues existed, then private standards organizations would have to sue the lawmakers for copyright infringement -- which would be a daunting -- and hopeless -- task.

If a standard is incorporated into a law,
it becomes public domain.
That should be the end of story.

However, given the many well-meaning but often misled judges out there, even at the highest levels of the judiciary, we will have to await their decision and the running of the appeals process, if required.

After all, if this case were in the hands of the Federal Circuit, for whom nearly everything appears to be a legitimate golden goose for greedy private interests, especially in patent law, Public.Resource.Org would surely lose.