This is a cross-post from http://drupal.org/node/1436736
As the maintainer of the countries module (and from trying to push the core D7 country list to comply with the latest release of the standard), I am wondering to what level that this standard can be used, it's usage, etc. This really effects Countries API and Countries modules, and about 10 other modules to some degree and also core Drupal 7 & 8.
From the original thread:
ISO 3166-1 - the list of countries.
ISO 639 - the list of languages.
These are widely used and republished on the internet. This has lead to the common thought that these would be licensed under public domain. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1 lists most of this data with no "use with permission" or copyright notice to the ISO. However, these standards are copyrighted material.
From a search this is what I could find out about this topic.
The short country names from ISO 3166-1 and the alpha-2 codes are made available by ISO at no charge for internal use and non-commercial purposes.
Ref: http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists.htm
And a related press release (archive) appears to reiterate this.
As IPR are way outside of my area of expertise, so it would be great for someone in this field to found out if there are any issues here.