The Anthropic ruling, or when the going gets tough

Why and how standards bodies must shift mindset before it's too late.

Thumbnail photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash.

Last week U.S. court ruling in a case involving the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, affirming that the use of books to train its AI model Claude was fair use and transformative¹, is a bad news for standards bodies. The decision comes at the precise moment where these bodies are discussing policies for them to keep the exclusive use of the content in their standards to train, in the future, their own AI models. The verdict directly undermines such strategies as any AI generative system can now ingest and repurpose technical content without licensing or compensation, as long as the material has been legally acquired.

This “Anthropic ruling" compounds the impact of the European Court of Justice's (ECJ) decision on 5 March 2024 requiring free public access to harmonized standards referenced in EU law, with the argument that public interest outweighs the protection of commercial interests of standards bodies. While it is hoped that the mandate for free access to standards in Europe can be contained to the continent and is not going to produce a domino effect, another front is opening in the United States that is compromising the objectives of standards bodies to add value and develop new revenues streams through technology.

This combination accelerates the existential threat to the revenues that standards bodies directly derive from the sales of standards. In this article, I will explain why a fundamental shift of mindset, from defensive copyright policies to an open exploitation of the content in standards, is not just advisable but critical for the survival of several standards bodies, and how such a shift can be provoked.