Yep, because now its public domain
Did he assign it to the public domain? If not, he has copyright on it. (Even something as trivial as that.) Unless, I suppose, he was copying somebody else's work and that person had put it in the public domain.
Of course, fair use would pretty much cover almost any use a person could make of something that short, unless he were to patent it. (I am not saying he should, of course.)
