Lawtify Premium: Public.Resource.Org (T-185/19), a Judicial Take on Standardisation and Public Access to Law

In Public.Resource.Org, the General Court (‘GC’) was called upon to balance the tension between the copyright claimed by a European standardisation organisation (‘ESO’) over four harmonised standards; and the request of free access to those standards, made by two NGOs. The GC, privileging the former, ruled (1) that ESOs are private bodies able to legitimately license and sell their products; (2) that harmonised standards are the result of creative and original work performed by ESOs and, therefore, worthy of copyright protection, and (3) that privileging the access to the content of the standards could be prejudicial to the ESO’s business model. In this context, this case note argues that, whatever the outcome of the case could be, the GC failed to give adequate consideration to (1) the constitutional role and public regulatory functions that harmonised standards fulfill; (2) the extent to which harmonised standards may actually be considered a product of free, creative, and original choices of their authors, and (3) whether harmonised standards in fact are a substantial part of the work and income of ESOs and whether they are not already sufficiently compensated for their work.