There are many other naming conventions that could have been used such as "Pacific Standard Time" or "PST" but the author chose to name the time zones based on popular/well-known geographical locations as their timezone names, not merely their descriptions. That is why its arguably creative.
In hindsight this seems like commonsense. But maybe not when it was designed. I'm personally against these kind of litigations. But if its purely based on interpreting the law, then this could be argued to be creative/expressive.
Again, I'm not even sure that the premise is even true. That is the litigation might not even be about the naming convention.
You should have researched more before posting. EST has not always meant the same thing in all places, certain areas moved into different timezones are different times, some places did or did not chose daylight saving time, etc.
By referencing the city name all those historical changes are also included.
You are only thinking about supporting the _current_ timezone, but this database also supports timezones for past dates and times.
A naming convention, if it were eligible for IP protection, would be in the realm of patent or trade secrets. It would not be under copyright. Here copyright is claimed.
In hindsight this seems like commonsense. But maybe not when it was designed. I'm personally against these kind of litigations. But if its purely based on interpreting the law, then this could be argued to be creative/expressive.
Again, I'm not even sure that the premise is even true. That is the litigation might not even be about the naming convention.