Copyrights Are Murky for Laws Referring to Outside Safety Codes

A decade-long copyright battle over safety standards and industry codes written by private groups and incorporated into public laws continues to rage in court as lawmakers also look to address the issue.

During oral arguments this week, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., seemed more focused on the contours of copyright fair use than the broader “government edicts doctrine,” which establishes that laws, ordinances, and judicial opinions fall within the public domain and are ineligible for copyright protection.

The dispute arose when three standards-setting organizations sued government-transparency group Public.Resource.Org Inc., which uploaded hundreds of codes online for free in ...