[fluoridation]

A code in this sense is something different. It's a shorthand for a longer description of an object. It'd be like a hotel copyrighting the relationship between a room number and its physical location within the building, or copyrighting resistor colors.

[Zambyte]

I understand. The different meanings of "code" in this conversation is why I said "software" in my comment instead of code.

Copyrighting software is as absurd the other things you listed.

[papercrane]

In the US copyright just requires a level of originality. The bar isn't very high, but for example simple logos, like IBMs blue lines logo is not copyrightable.

There are examples of software code that is probably not copyrightable, but that's limited to very simple code that has only obvious implementations.

[fluoridation]

>Copyrighting software is as absurd the other things you listed.

I don't really agree, and for context I think copyright in general is nonsense.