AERA v. PUBLICRESOURCE.ORG, INC. | Civil Action No. 1:14-cv-00857-TSC | D.D.C. | February 11, 2016
The Cyberlaw Clinic filed an amicus brief (pdf) on behalf of a group of law scholars in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in this case brought by several standards developing organizations (SDOs) against Public.Resource.org. The brief builds upon a similar brief filed by the Clinic and joined by amici in ASTM v. Public Resource, Case No. 1:13-cv-01215-EGS (D.D.C.), pending before the same court. As in the previous case, the plaintiffs in this case are organizations that develop standards (SDOs). They include American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, Inc., and the National Council on Measurement in Education, Inc. Plaintiffs allege copyright and trademark infringement by defendant Public Resource, a non-profit organization dedicated to making government information accessible to the public, for publishing on its website privately developed standards that have been incorporated into federal law. This brief advances many of the same legal arguments made in the brief in the ASTM case with reference to model codes and applies those arguments to privately developed standards.