ANSI Publishes Updated Action Brief on IBR Landscape for SDOs

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has released an updated Action Brief for standards developing organizations (SDOs) on issues surrounding standards that are incorporated by reference, or (IBR’d) into law.

“What Standard Developing Organizations (SDOs) Need to Know About Incorporation By Reference (IBR)” informs SDOs of current IBR trends, current efforts to address IBR concerns, and outlines key questions that SDOs should ask themselves as they look at their own current and future business models in light of the changing IBR landscape.

Updates to the Action Brief, first published in 2024, include:

• The latest legal developments in U.S. cases concerning IBR’d standards
• Exceptions to copyright protection that are gaining acceptance in the U.S. and abroad
• Insights on how courts are dealing with the commercial exploitation of IBR’d standards

What is Incorporation by Reference (IBR)?

IBR is a practice by federal, state, local, and Tribal authorities of referencing standards into regulations. SDOs make their works available for use by governmental entities in setting safety and other regulations when those entities deem it in the public interest, with the understanding that these works will retain their copyright protection. This provides SDOs the ability to maintain control of the works that they create and to generate revenue from the sale and licensing of these works, which, in turn, enables SDOs to sustain their ongoing standards creation, refinement, and updating. Recent case law, however, is trending towards limiting copyright protection in IBR’d standards.