the economic incentive of copyright protection for these private entities prompted the Ninth Circuit to rule in favor of the AMA's retention of its copyright in the Physician's Current Procedures Terminology ("CPT") despite a federal agency's adoption of the CPT:
The copyright system's goal of promoting the arts and sciences by granting temporary monopolies to copyrightholders was not at stake in Banks because judges' salaries provided adequate incentive to write opinions. In contrast, copyrightability of the CPT provides the economic incentive for the AMA to produce and maintain the CPT. "To vitiate copyright, in such circumstances, could, without adequate justification, prove destructive of the copyright interest, in encouraging creativity," a matter of particular significance in this context because of "the increasing trend toward state and federal adoptions of model codes."[1]
This approach is also consistent with the Second Circuit's two pronged test in County of Suffolk for determining whether a work may be deemed to be in the public domain: "(1) whether the entity or individual who created the work needs an economic incentive to create or has a proprietary interest in creating the work and (2) whether the public needs notice of this particular work to have notice of the law."[2]
Here, without the ability to control unrestricted gratuitous dissemination of its model codes, SBCCI
- ↑ Practice Management, 121 F.3d at 518 (quoting 1 Nimmer on Copyright § 5.06[C], at 5-92 (1996))(emphasis added).
- ↑ County of Suffolk, 261 F.3d at 194.
contractors and other interested parties. The remaining revenue is mainly derived from the annual fees of voluntary members and member organizations. Voluntary members include scholars, builders, contractors, and governmental entities that have adopted the code.
55
