Generally, scientific data cannot have a copyright in the USA.
US Copyright law sets out what can and cannot be copyrighted in 17 USC S102:
Section (a) lists out what can be copyrighted.
Section (b) lists what cannot be and is as follows:
(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
The Notes for section (b) state:
Nature of Copyright. Copyright does not preclude others from using the ideas or information revealed by the author’s work. It pertains to the literary, musical, graphic, or artistic form in which the author expressed intellectual concepts. Section 102(b) makes clear that copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. Some concern has been expressed lest copyright in computer programs should extend protection to the methodology or processes adopted by the programmer, rather than merely to the “writing” expressing his ideas. Section 102(b) is intended, among other things, to make clear that the expression adopted by the programmer is the copyrightable element in a computer program, and that the actual processes or methods embodied in the program are not within the scope of the copyright law. Section 102(b) in no way enlarges or contracts the scope of copyright protection under the present law. Its purpose is to restate, in the context of the new single Federal system of copyright, that the basic dichotomy between expression and idea remains unchanged.
The corollary here is that the copyrightable element in the standard is the arrangement of the information and the listed reasoning, but not the data itself.
In Feist Pubs., Inc. v. Rural Tel. Svc. Co., Inc., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) the US Supreme Court held that "the fundamental axiom of copyright law is that no one may copyright facts or ideas." stating:
A compilation is not copyrightable per se, but is copyrightable only if its facts have been "selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." § 101 (emphasis added). Thus, the statute envisions that some ways of selecting, coordinating, and arranging data are not sufficiently original to trigger copyright protection. Even a compilation that is copyrightable receives only limited protection, for the copyright does not extend to facts contained in the compilation. § 103(b).
In Feist, the Court held that the raw data in Rural's white pages was not copyrightable, however, Rural would have a copyright in the work as a whole because of information outside the raw facts.
As for standards like Building Codes, Plumbing Codes, Electrical Codes, they are protected by copyright.
It will be interesting to see whether this changes in the future considering the recent Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org case where the Court held that the annotations to the official code of Georgia are not copyrightable. We will have to wait and see if Building Codes, being incorporated into the Law, means they cannot be copyrighted. Currently, however, they are copyrighted.
