Sounds a lot like Oracle's justification for owning the Java API (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_.... ) in which
de minimis things like variable and structure declarations were used by Oracle to justify a copyright-maximal approach that would have utterly laid waste to open source development.
The code in question is not something that anyone needs to own. Rather, it's what anyone would write, faced with the same problem. It's stupid to make humans do a robot's job in the name of preserving meaningless "IP rights".