Can HTML formatting be copyrighted?
<p>A private website that publishes the Constitution of Pakistan carries the following copyright disclaimer:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We reserve all rights to the HTML formatting and presentation of the entire Constitution and all accompanying documents as presented here. No reproduction of the HTML formatting is permitted without our express written permission.</p>
<p><a href="http://pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/copyright.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Source</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>My question is, does HTML formatting meet the the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality" rel="nofollow noreferrer">threshold of originality</a>? Or is this text likely just a deterrent?</p>

<p>Unless there is something special in Pakistani case law on this topic, it would pass the originality requirement. In my opinion, it is actually very well laid out, and it is clearly not just slapping a few tags on plain text. <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2256161" rel="noreferrer">This article</a> does not indicate any particularly high standards for originality in Pakistan.</p>

<p>After taking a look at the website <a href="http://pakistani.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://pakistani.org/</a>, there is nothing special about the website. They use basic HTML without any special formatting so there's no way to verify originality. </p>

<p>This work is <strong>not sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection</strong>.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>"The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are <strong>sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not</strong>. In this context, "originality" refers to "coming from someone as the originator/author" (insofar as it somehow reflects the author's personality), rather than "never having occurred or existed before" (which would amount to the protection of something new, as in patent protection)."</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Source <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Threshold of originality</a></p>

copyright public-domain pakistan