In the Malamud decision, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) held on 5 March 2024 in Case C-588/21 P that there may be an overriding public interest in the dissemination of harmonised European standards.
Carl Malamud had requested access to several European standards for his organisation public.resource.org.
The European Commission refused to make the requested European standards for toy safety available free of charge, whereupon Malamud filed a lawsuit.
The ECJ ruled that those harmonised technical standards (HTN) that are mandatory are part of Union law.
However, the Court did not generally rule out copyright protection for harmonised standards.