The end of the “paywall” for standards?

The Malamud ruling and its disruption of the European standardisation system: access to harmonised standards free of charge is taken as a given. Other European countries are responding with public funding or pivoting to certification; meanwhile, DIN is looking to artificial intelligence and smart data.

Technical standardisation is witnessing a paradigm shift that is placing the standards organisations’ business models in doubt. Ruling C-588/21 P of the European Court of Justice marks the end of an era in which access to harmonised standards was made conditional upon payment of a fee – and not infrequently a high one. The ruling’s legal shock was triggered by the American activist Carl Malamud, who with his organisation PublicResource.org has fought for many years for the principle that legislation and the rules referenced within it must be available to everyone to read free of charge.

In 2024, the ECJ’s judges agreed with Malamud’s reasoning and ruled that harmonised technical standards, such as those specifying safety requirements for toys or elevators, constitute an essential part of EU legislation. They are thus subject to the constitutional requirement that they be transparent. Parties who are obliged to observe rules must also be able to familiarise themselves with them without first having to pay an “entrance fee” to private-sector organisations.

This development is not unique to Europe. In April this year, an American appeals court in Philadelphia ruled on a dispute between the standards organisation ASTM International and the UpCodes service. The court determined that private-sector standards largely forfeit their copyright status as soon as they are incorporated verbatim into state legislation. The principle of “fair use” takes precedence here over the right to commercial exploitation.

Standards organisations in Europe adopt new strategies

A glance at Europe shows a range of responses among the continent’s countries to the loss of this traditional “paywall”. Slovenia, for example, has acted decisively: in response to the legal development at European level, the Ministry of the Economy, Tourism and Sport decided to partly nationalise funding of the SIST standards institute. Harmonised standards are therefore now cross-funded by tax revenues, enabling them to be made available to the public free of charge.

Standardisation heavyweights such as the British Standards Institution (BSI), AFNOR in France and AENOR in Spain, which had already diversified as service providers before the ECJ ruling, are pursuing a different strategy. Their revenues are now derived from certifications, test marks and comprehensive training provision; little is still generated from the sale of documents in paper or PDF form.

In Scandinavia, Danish Standards in particular is focusing on technological integration. The Danes offer consulting packages for CE marking; provision of the standard’s text is a mere secondary benefit.

DIN opts for new business models employing AI

DIN, the German Institute for Standardization, is at the heart of this transformation. Marion Winkenbach, Managing Director of DIN Media, DIN’s licensing and sales arm, warns against reading too much into the ruling’s consequences for business models. The circumstances, she points out, are complex. First, the number of standards affected: of the total of 24,982 European standards under CEN and CENELEC’s responsibility in the first quarter of 2026, only 3,614 are classified as harmonised, i.e. produced by one of the European Standards Organizations in response to a European Commission mandate. DIN currently makes 446 of these standards available free of charge on its national platform.

According to Winkenbach, a negative financial impact has not yet arisen, partly because the European standards institutes interpret the ruling narrowly by providing limited access. DIN interprets “access” as meaning that the standards can be read online, but not downloaded or printed out; downloads or printed copies continue to require a licence, for which a fee is charged.

At the same time, DIN is conscious that the mere sale of standards is no longer viable as the primary business model. Customers increasingly do not expect to have to pay for standards, and the Malamud ruling is only reinforcing this expectation. Even before the ruling, DIN was responding to changes in user requirements with a two-pronged strategy, comprising new sources of funding and technological innovations. “Sponsored access” models are a part of this: the standard is paid for by sponsors, such as ministries or industry associations, rather than by end users. These bodies have a vested interest in certain standards being widely adopted.

DIN Media’s focus lies on the transition from publisher and content provider to software and data vendor. “We need to offer customers smart means of accessing standards and added value for their application,” says Winkenbach. In a digitalised industrial environment, a static, 700-page PDF file is an outdated solution. DIN is therefore looking to artificial intelligence and granular data formats such as XML or ReqIF. An AI assistant based on the Gemini LLM is intended to guide users through cascading questions to the desired answer, for example concerning a specific aspect of a standard’s application.

Rather than searching laboriously through a collection of standards to find the correct mixing ratios for concrete pipes, users receive the answer from AI, together with a reference to the relevant clauses. The added value is achieved by an increase in search efficiency, and thus shifts from providing access to standards to a selective understanding of them.

Sabrina Butters, Head of Partner Management at DIN Media, sees real demand in this area. Many companies wish to feed standards into their internal, AI-based systems. Unlike its counterparts in Spain and the United Kingdom, DIN is choosing not to enter the certification business, so as not to jeopardise its role as a neutral moderator within the standardisation process.

The Malamud ruling thus forces DIN to re-think parts of its strategy for monetising the approval conferred upon a consensus-based standard by an expert process lasting several years. The challenge is to deliver validated knowledge in machine-readable form. DIN is placing its faith in the intelligence of its data. The approach transforms standardisation into a digital tool; access for readers free of charge is only the beginning. Ultimately, the Malamud ruling could provide the impetus for innovation that standardisation needs in order to prevail in the age of AI and Industry 4.0.