From an EFF announcement this week:
Technical standards like fire and electrical codes developed by private organizations but incorporated into public law can be freely disseminated without any liability for copyright infringement, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The judge ruled that posting the materials constituted fair use — so the nonprofit group doing the posting won’t be liable for copyright infringement. The American Bar Association Journal reports:
The decision is a victory for public-domain advocate Carl Malamud and the group that he founded, Public.Resource.org. The group posts legal materials on its websites, including the standards developed by the three organizations that sued… “It has been over 10 years since plaintiffs filed suit in this case,” said Malamud in a press release by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The U.S. Court of Appeals has found decisively in favor of the proposition that citizens must not be relegated to economy-class access to the law.”