In a case pitting standards development organisations against internet content aggregators, a United States federal court ruled that Public.Resource.Org breached copyright by posting unauthorised copies of standards incorporated into government education regulations. Public Resource has appealed.
The 2 February opinion of the US District Court for the District of Columbia consolidates two cases, one of which is American Educational Research Association [AERA], Inc., American Psychological Association, Inc. and National Council on Measurement in Education, Inc. v. Public.Resource.Org. The plaintiffs in both cases are standards development organisations (SDOs); Public.Resource.Org (Public Resource) is a non-profit entity devoted to the public dissemination of legal information.
The opinion is available here: https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/Opinions.pl?2017
The AERA case arose in 2012 when Public Resource posted various educational and psychological testing standards – which had been incorporated by reference into state and federal education agency regulations — on the internet. Plaintiffs alleged that the standards are protected original works, and sued claiming copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement. Public Resource sought a declaratory judgment that its conduct didn’t violate copyright law.
The court found copyright infringement and permanently barred Public Resource from allowing further public access to the standards.
Case “Far from Over”
The decision is one court’s way of resolving the debate between SDOs that believe their hard work and creative efforts should be protected by copyright and internet aggregators who believe that anything relied upon by government agencies, including copyrighted standards in promulgating rules and regulations should be free to the public, said Quarles & Brady LLP (Washington, DC) intellectual property lawyer Jonathan Hudis, who represented the plaintiffs.
There are several other pending cases against Public Resource surrounding the same or similar subject matter, Hudis said. Recent cases against Google, such as Author’s Guild v. Google and Author’s Guild v. Hathitrust have been resolved by court decisions, he said.
In a 5 February statement through the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Resource noted that the district court decision “runs contrary to decisions in other parts of the country, and raises serious constitutional claims. We don’t see how the decision can be reconciled with the due process right to know the law, nor our First Amendment right to share it.”
But “the case is far from over,” Public Resource said. It promised to continue making important government documents available and to push governments to “allow everyone to read and speak the law.”
The statement is here.